Dr. Perry Share

Good morning, David.

Lovely to be here.

Yeah, I mean, I've been interested in it for probably 20 years, but I've been making that point for a long time that nobody was really seriously studying it.

And maybe it's because it's so taken for granted that sociologists in Ireland have tended to focus on things like poverty and politics and, you know, big social questions like that.

And the pub was sort of there, but we all went to the pub.

We walked past the pub.

We knew it was there, but we didn't really study it.

That's a very tricky question.

I think it's some sort of combination of atmosphere, ambience, design, history, even.

And the whole cultural place of the pub, you know, in our literature, in our drama, our fiction.

Famous, famous writers associated with the pub like Brendan Behan or Sean O'Casey.

So it comes together and it has, of course, been packaged now, you know, both in Ireland and internationally as a commodity.

But it's that it's a certain feeling which is almost indescribable.

And maybe that's why people go there to find out what it is.

It does.

And that's the conversation that I think we need to have in Ireland.

I mean, there's a lot of nostalgia for the pub.

I mean, you know, we can't open a newspaper these days without the story of a pub, you know, a loved pub that has disappeared or maybe a good news story about a pub that's been taken over by its community.

But we have an nostalgia for pubs and we take them for granted and like them.

But we never really confront that question of, you know, how do we reconcile the alcohol thing and the pub thing?