Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

Over the last number of years, the Government has allocated significant investment to pubs. The investment during the Covid-19 pandemic was unprecedented and enabled many rural pubs to develop good outdoor facilities and so on. That is a good thing and very positive.

I do take the Deputy's point about socialisation being good for you. Professor Luke O'Neill has written in his Sunday Independentarticles about socialisation being a very important metric or factor in mental and physical well-being.

There is a multifactorial reason for closures of rural pubs. It is not all just about the excise duty. There are other factors. Society is changing. For example, when a person retires from a family-owned pub, very often the younger generation does not necessarily want to take over the pub because of the way the economy is, with full employment and so on.

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