Following the closure of a Cork village’s last pub, a group of 70 locals clubbed together to re-open the establishment as a social hub for the community.
Cullen, in North-West Cork, used to have 5 pubs, 3 shops, a creamery, a post office, and a petrol station but all have since closed, with the final pub closing almost 2 years ago.
Now residents of a 400-person village have raised €380,000 to re-open ‘Tigh Laitiarain’, named after St Laitiarain.
On The Hard Shoulder, director of Tigh Laitiarain, Damian Hickey, said shareholders’ goal in opening the pub was to “bring back the social venue for everyone, for young and old.”
He said he hoped Tigh Laitiarain would prove financially viable in the future but that the main hope was to “keep the rural community alive.”
Mr. Hickey said “the heart and soul went out of the village” when the pub closed and that smiles have returned to the faces of locals.
Response has been “unbelievable”
Mr. Hickey said that it has been “unbelievable” since the pub re-opened, with parties and a “young crowd” becoming regular fixtures.
However, he said the owners “were under no illusions” that current levels of interest in the pub would continue, but that they were confident that the local community will support them.
Mr. Hickey said the previous establishment was “always a viable business” and that its closure was instead due to the previous owner wanting a career change.
Rural pubs “at breaking point”
Also on the show was Pat Crotty, CEO of the Vintners Federation of Ireland, who said small Irish villages pubs are “at breaking point.”
He said that Government VAT changes occurred due to Vintners Federation of Ireland lobbying, but that Government did not realise tax changes would not help establishments who do not sell food.
Mr. Crotty said that there are a “huge amount” of pubs across Ireland “hoping for some support from Government in no certainty of getting it, but absolutely needing it.”
Pubs “the heart and soul of communities”
He argued that many people living in urban areas “see the pub as just another business,” but that “it’s a complete different thing altogether” in rural communities
“This is literally where everything starts and finishes. New ideas are begun and the celebration… are back in the pub again. It is the heart and soul of everything.”
He noted that pubs became “the only place you could boil a kettle or charge a phone and get information about what the council were doing” during recent storms.
