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DRINKS INDUSTRY HEADS have today called for a reversal in the increase of excise duty on alcohol, blaming it for the closure of more than 1,000 pubs in Ireland since 2007.
The Drinks Industry Group of Ireland (DIGI) claimed that rising tax on alcohol had “cost jobs, has made our tourism offering less competitive and has punished the hard pressed Irish consumer.”
Speaking before the Joint Oireachtas Finance Committee today, Padraig Cribben, CEO of the Vintners’ Federation of Ireland (VFI), said successive hikes in excise meant Ireland was now “the most expensive country in Europe to buy alcohol.”
Research by Fáilte Ireland had, he claimed, found that the high price of drink was second only to bad weather when tourists were asked to list their grievances about holidaying in Ireland.
Excise damages our rural pubs and independent off-licences…The small pubs in rural communities cannot soak up excise increases…
They are forced to pass the increase on to consumers who often assume the publican is price gouging.
80% of the increase in the cost of a pint in the pub since 2011 has been directly caused by taxation.
Rising prices in the Republic have also caused a rush across the border, where alcohol is, on average, 35% cheaper, Cribben told the committee.
Alcohol Action Ireland, however, have countered today’s statement by DIGI, claiming that “tackling pricing, including increasing excise duty, is one of the most effective ways a Government can reduce alcohol consumption.”
Its CEO Suzanne Costello said in a statement this afternoon:
Simply put, if the price of alcohol goes up, alcohol-related harm – and the huge financial burden it places on the State – goes down.
We have seen in the recent past that increases in excise duty have led directly to a reduction alcohol consumption in Ireland, while when excise duty has been cut, as it was in 2010, our alcohol consumption has increased.
Budget 2013 saw a 10 cent increase on the price of a pint of beer, cider or a standard measure of spirits, and a 50 cent rise on a 75cl bottle of wine.
The year before that, a €1 tax hike on wine was found to have brought in €45 million in additional revenue.
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Five euro for a beer in most pubs in and around dublin. Unless you want to drink in a shit hole. Tesco 8 beers 10-12 euro. No wonder !
Stay home and talk to ur self
Stay at home and troll the Journal readers comments.
Works for you Frank!
even 6-8cans have gone up in price alot.. cans karpackie polish beer used to be 4euro for 4cans. then after a few months 5euro.. in places like tesco its 6euro for only 4cans!!! even larger like Carling was always only a euro per can, not anymore its now 1.10-1.20.. all because of taxes!!! i only buy bottles of Lech for 1.70 each in lidl… these are around 2.50 each in off licenses. worth it when chilled.
I find polish beer to be total shit, and I get a wicked hangover from it. Lidl were selling pint cans of beer for 88 cent last year. Cheap and cheerful – and had the added advantage of being low strength at 3.9%
yea i find it s*** as well, high volume mind but toxic, hence your hangover. craft beers are ftw, far better quality and worth it.
Low strength is an advantage????????
Go in to a country pub and still talk to ur self.
John Bassi that’s where you meet the best company
In Dublin you pay 1.25 for a beer (includes tax) + 5.25 for renting the table and chair to drink it at.
It just doesn’t make any sense. Pubs arent the communal hangout area they used to be, its mostly groups of friends with little interest in mingling with their fellow pub-goers so they might as well just buy cans in Tesco since they don’t require the table and chair rental service a pub offers
So if the government reduces excise on alcohol I can fully expect the publican to reduce their prices.Hahahaha.
For me it is not just about the pubs – the fact that a whisky distilled in Ireland and shipped off to Germany is cheaper than actually buying the stuff in Ireland might suggest that they have taken the whole tax thing a step too far…
Put the price of a pint up and people will buy drink in the supermarket.
Or will drink less.
I doubt it.
It’s not just cost that is a factor.
Part of the shift to supermarket booze is not cost, part of it is cultural. A lot of people now in their 20s and teens prefer a house party to going out to a night club.
For people who have ticked the gaff parties and clubbing box in life and moved on to the next phase when they get married they too are preferring having their mates over for a BBQ and a few drinks on the decking or a dinner party to a noisy pub.
I can explain half of this trend in the simple choice:
a club…
-Roll of a dice on getting the wrong kind of bouncer (having been one before I got sick I know more than most what some of them are like!!) who will just not like you
-A que to get in in the freezing icy cold
-The insult of having to pay for the privilege of walking through the door
-Some walking chin/roid case (I’m looking at you 92, XXI krystle..) clipping your shoulder as they walk by and starting a row over his split drink
-Music you hate being blasted so loud you’re ears are ringing
-Saying ”WHAT????” every 2 seconds to a mate whos less than half a meter from your face and you still can’t hear each other.
-Watching twenty five year olds still act like they are 14, so amazed that they’re scoring someone they can barely stop themselves from dry humping them in the middle of the dance floor…
-Geordie Short wannabes who should realize:
1. They’re Irish
2. A Geordie is just a skanger with some muscle and a tan, and not something to envy
-Being frozen with awe the number of those guys who are supposedly heterosexual dressing and having hairstyles gayer than Graham Norton wandering around
-Harsh lights coming on and the music stopping at a predetermined but nonsensical time suddenly illuminating what your beer googles did not illuminate hours earlier, making you hope to God nobody saw who you were with earlier…
-Having to cram uncomfortably into a taxi and pay 20euro+ to get home if you are NOT crammed
-Waiting the hour or half hour in the icy cold between nightlinks, sharing the nightlink with people on the way home who ought to realize everyone can hear what they’re saying because they’re still talking at nightclub volume
OR…
-Empty Rooms and Quiet corners to with a bit of privacy
-Being around your own friends and their friends, people you’ll tend to like
-Music you choose, at a volume you have control over
-Much more comfort
-Food whenever you want
-No fee just for being there
-You leave when you want
Every nightclub in a nutshell, still sometimes going out and quietly laughing at all around you is quite relaxing, makes one glad to have independent thought.
You sound like middle aged me
My parents pub was one of those which had to close it’s doors last August after 37 years in business. Like a lot of things it’s not just because of one thing it’s multiple , yes tax is a big component , but so is the lack of a rural transport i.e. taxis , people have less money and a decline in the number of people in rural Ireland. Those whom are young and still here are heading to the bigger towns or cities… me included . Its no fun when a place is empty from a customer and publicans viewpoint. It was sad to see my parents place close and even harder to see 50 year old men and women crying leaving cause their social spot was no more. Yes there are other pubs and yes it’s life , but for some people it’s an end to their business to hand down to their families and an end to some peoples only social output.
Don’t believe that increases stop binge drinking or those who are heavy drinkers. The heavy drinker just swaps to a cheaper drink and buying from off licence sales. They do affect the moderate drinker who in many cases prefers to drink socially ie in pubs, clubs and restaurants, which are the places closing with job losses.
I dunno, any of my binge drinking happens on nights out in Pubs, Clubs or festivals. I have never felt compelled to get wasted at home watching a match or a movie
Does my drinking offend you?
There is your problem in the picture. The pubs that are doing well sell a proper selection of beers and ales, not the usual muck.
Evolve or die.
Food is very important to a pubs survival now. And quite often also having decent coffee.
i just don’t think people have the money anymore since the recession, thats the answer really, not vat, tax, high prices, people just wont pay it anymore and will use off licence. its not just the pub trade thats hit, retail, restaurants, but the prices stay up, strange, if they want to close then fine but prices all round will have to come down. their largest customer base are irish and its they that have lost jobs, cant find and/or emigrated = pubs close. maybe if we had our jobs back the economy would grow, otherwise more to come. can’t have it both ways.
Couple of problems with this. First, the €1 on a bottle of wine is effectively a regressive tax, although rarely described as such as it’s on a luxury item. If, for example, I was partial to €50 bottles of chateauneuf du pape, then I would only have suffered a 2% increase, while if I could only stretch to €10 bottles of plonk i would suffer a 10% increase. This is on top of wine taxes that have regularly been challenged by the French as uncompetitive and even illegal under EU law.
Second, the AAI woman says that increases in excise lead to reductions in consumption and vice versa. While this is true, what she fails to mention is that the correlation is not proportionate. Alcohol, particularly beer & stout, are highly price inelastic. Some estimates put PED of alcohol at under 0.1, so an increase in price of 10% will only result in reduced consumption of 1%. Under such conditions you really have to pile on the taxes to have any noticeable impact on consumption, which would be difficult in a country that shares a border with a lower tax jurisdiction, and relies so heavily on alcohol for employment & tax revenue.
The easiest way around the drinking problem is to increase the price of strong beers and drinks, and reduce or leave alone the price of weaker ones. Say, anything below 4%.
And Niall who r u to tell me whether I can drink or not you may a robotic personality I don’t I am social human who likes mixing I don’t vote for the same party I vote who I think is right
I don’t blindly follow rules I always question them
You like many other sheep is fine but don’t impose your lateral lifestyle onto us
Good man, Let’s reduce the price of cigarettes so as we’re at it. The fact is, it is a tried and tested method and has been shown to work in Canada.
I’ll even go one further. Increase booze prices dramatically, and use the tax take to fund free GP care for all.
It’s called, living in a society.
Niall
In Germany the price is kept low and people there actually enjoy going for a drink without going to bank of Ireland for a loan
And guess what a little secret for ya
If you reduce the price you will sell a lot more drink and this will increase the tax take for all us simpletons who die happy campers
And another tip for you
In Canada they eat one of the most unhealthiest meals in the world they have an obsession with fried chicken
But guess what they don’t tax the food higher than any other food
Since when wine is luxury?
Fascist
Niall
You’re not making sense. On one hand you say increase the price to curt down people’s. Drinking. On the other you say increase te tax and use the added revenue to pay for free healthcare. If people drink less then where’s the added tax revenue coming from? Or do you agree that all this talk from governments, world wide, about increasing taxes to safeguard people’s health is all whitewash and the increases are to bring in more cash.
There was too many of them anyway
The Nanny State wins again
I bet you read the Daily Mail.
No, I’m not a peasant. I bet you buy any tabloid?
Any one will do to wipe my arse with.
Wow. Nanny State. Just wow. Did you think if that one by yourself or did you just borrow it off everyone everywhere?
Yes we need more pubs and drunken carnage in this country! Our drunken image is being tarnished by the lack of pubs, it’s very unfair.
Plenty for Wetherspoons to mop up
One Weatherspoon = 5 Normal pubs.
Watch JDW build their chain.
Watch and learn…
From the reviews we’ve seen so far they’d need to buck up. Prices don’t really seem to be the issue: http://www.jar.ie/bar/dublin/blackrock/three-tun-tavern
For what it’s worth lads I was in wetherspoons today in blackrock Dublin and I had a nice smooth pint of tetleys ale for I think 3-95 and the place was beautiful with great staff they also let me taste 2 other ales I can’t remember their names but they were not great I think goblin or hob goblin was one of them, they also have a menu and if you buy a certain meal for a extra 2 euro you can order a drink as well ! I had a pint and chicken strips and coleslaw and chips for 9.95 … Just saying.. ( sorry for waffling on)
Can u sit at the bar ? Just wondering
No, bar is like queuing for McDonald’s.
Was in there on Friday and got served quicker than most pubs – got a pint and fish chips and mushy peas for under a tenner – plus it’s a lovely pub inside – less dingey than tonic
they all do that in the romance stage, always! it wont last for long, prices will be just like everywhere else this time next year, or even in 6 months but that would be pushing it. they might go for the 2 year plan.
Don’t be sorry, you are providing information.
Doubt it – they tend to have consistent pricing – if you are eating there it works out close to half price – I’m already doing my patriotic duty paying through the nose in paye – lot of pubs in Dublin need a kick up the aras
Can still get a pint in my local in Sligo for €3.30, €5 for anything around Dublin, are taxes higher in Dublin, are the staff paid higher? Expenses that much higher? (I know rates are) but this seems to be publicans looking for sympathy, 1000 pubs closed due to excess loans mainly and how many have opened in their place?
Dublin has a separate vintners association to the rest of the country. The fact that prices are higher in Dublin than everywhere else has nothing to do with this, because vintners associations are not organised collusion to effectively control market prices.
I think Dublin has a union for bar staff, so I’d assume they do get paid more than elsewhere.
Most pubs in urban areas that have closed have been replaced by something else. Smaller pubs outside city centres are certainly disappearing a bit, but that’s kind of following population trends really as new pubs have opened in suburban areas to cater for new populations.
Big problem in rural areas though. Whatever about tax, licensing costs and more affordable licences for rural taxis would go a long way to helping that sector.
How many have opened since 2007?
Two thirds of the price of a bottle of Jameson is Government charges. You can buy a bottle in New York for less than that two thirds.
Pub near me has been for sale since 2006. Closed for good back in April. Bad business sense and lack of regulars. Licence sold to local business. Premises bought for use by Church of Ireland.
Beats the super pubs buying the churches!!!!!!
..or Super Churches going bust..
http://dialogueireland.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/church-of-damned.pdf
During the celtic tiger the pubs turned in to yuppy gastro sandwich bars I once seen a old coger with a hat and walking stick been told can he come back for apint after they served the lunch as they cleary didnt want and old smokey coger around wile the snobs had their sandwichs they cry out for customers now to drink in their pubs that same pub is gone now!
saw that Spar were selling 20 bottles of Miller for €13, so if the publicans want to understand whats going on well this is it
Don’t be afraid to name the pubs that are pricy and the ones that are not, as someone who works in the trade price is not the number factor people decide on
After the end of the boom people had less money to spend. The pub trade suffered like any other retailer. The majority of retailers had to drop their prices but pubs put theirs up thinking that no matter what, people will always go to the pub. The culture of going to the pub for social or family occasions is over as people can no longer afford it. What excise duty is placed on bottled water or soft drinks?, yet pub prices are multiples of the prices charged in the supermarket. I knew the writing was on the wall when I heard Guinness adds encouraging us to “enjoy Guinness at home”.
The answer is to become more competitive and reduce prices and that is the only way to try to bring customers back.
Well, Mary Harney told us to shop around and when a pub hits me for €5.50 for a bottle of beer I can get in supervalu for €2.50 its a no brainer I’m afraid, a pity but we’re all watching our readies.
Majority of pubs in rural Ireland are rented and because of this the majority of drink companies want payment within a few days of delivery putting the tenant under undue financial stress. Also some drinks companies send orders to publicans even though no order is placed and then take money out of their accounts within days, once again putting undue financial stress on the tenants. This is one of the many reasons Ireland’s pubs are closing their doors.
Why shouldn’t the suppliers want payment? I can’t go in for a pint and pay them sometime soon.
We are spending 50 million euros a week on booze.
We must therefore be consuming far more alcohol than we were in 2007 as we’re now buying a much greater amount of discount crates at the supermarket rather than paying pub prices per pint.
John
We probably are buying more at discount, low prices in supermarkets. The article was about the effect high taxation is having on pubs. I would imagine pubs have a lot more staff only involved is selling drink than supermarkets which probably don’t have staff knowledgable staff that is selling alcohol, so the closure of pubs is increasing unemployment.
Spot on Steve. No one seems to have thought of that when below cost selling was permitted in supermarkets. Would be easy enough to ban below cost selling of alcohol I imagine, and that would be good for local off licences & pubs. Also, when did every garage start stocking booze? Surely potential problems can be seen with that?!
Any business that refuses to be competitive should close its doors.absolutely no sympathy for greedy vintners in this country who continue to charge extortionate prices for no reason at all only they believe irish people are fools and will continue to pay what they’ve been paying
I am out of work 2 years because of a direct result of pubs and nite clubs closing down.i worked all over Ireland North and South installing sound and vision systems.This Country has failed so many people who payed there dues.I can’t see this country ever recovering from the bust I really hope I am wrong but it’s still going on look at the concert fiasco in CROKE park a joke. Anyone looking for a driver!!!!!!
All thats in pubs is people pretending to be happy and nice people. Then when they go home the poor wife is abused and beat up while the children pretend to be asleep.
Close them all.
Pubs can be dangerous places … http://www.herald.ie/news/oap-stabbed-pal-in-head-in-row-over-aintree-bet-28005738.html
Denise you need counciling were not all like the person you know
What about the women in the pubs?
I go to the pub sometimes and I think I’m a nice person.
I could be deluded though – maybe I’m a complete w@nker.
Marry a wrong ‘un Denise?
Publish the list of pubs that closed , I just dont believe it…
Are they counting the pubs that changed name or ownership ? How many licenses have been handed back, how many new licenses awarded since 2007?
You need a tax clearance cert to renew your license.
If your tax is not up to date, you cannot renew it.
I love a bottle of tesco vodka for the weekends. Imagine if I was in a pub, the cost of buying that volume would make u stay sobber. Feck off
Be sobbing your eyes out after a bottle of that alright. Paint stripper is cheaper.
Asking for relief on a product that does more damage to society than heroin is a bit of a joke,Though the drinks industry seem blind to it. They assuage their guilt with a few adverts and few kind words.Greed, …..for increased profits is their only motivation to ask for any relief.They are hypocrites ..all of them.So what if more pubs close..There is more than enough as it is.
It is very, very sad that this has come to pass. All of these small businesses provided employment (which is the obsession of the day), but alas the tyranny of the governing classes allied to the new puritanism has rung their death knell and there will be no return.
Tesco are one of the dearest vodka sellers you need to shop around
Don’t worry enda solution will be to tax off-licence sales problem solved, invest in sainbury shares I say!!!!!
Yeah right Shane, do you really think so??
If they tax the off-licence sales it will just drive the people across the border to our friends up north.
Or worse still, this could present an opportunity on the black market where people will buy alcohol
illegally putting an even bigger dent in the states coffers.
Then alcohol consumption and sales will be reduced “in Ireland.”
However, this will only be on paper as in reality people will be drinking the same but
just purchasing the alcohol outside the state.
Alcohol is already too expensive in this country and if people cannot afford it from
reputable sources then they will go elsewhere.
But just try explaining that to the clowns in government.
I’m getting really tired of hearing about alcohol and everything that surrounds it. Today, we’re lamenting the closure of Irish pubs. Tomorrow, we’ll all be appalled by the problems caused by drinking.
nobody has mentioned the fact that the pub situation in ireland,ie,pubs per town,is ridiculous,10 pubs in my hometown and one street,no industry or jobs to speak of,and its the same in most small towns,only country ive ever seen it,and people cant understand that its unsustainable,many more will close i would imagine,simply because there are far too many as it is
Just means there were 1000 pubs too many! Not like there’s nowhere to go for a pint
True but if you mix it with white spirits in the next isle (tesco brand white spirits) it last’s Friday through Monday
Try some Tactical Nuclear Penguin 32% beer brewed using the Eisbock process
It poses the question.. To beer, or not to beer?
Name them,,,,,,
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