A desire to take “habitual drunkards” off our streets in the 19th Century and an antipathy in the 1930s towards jazz of all things are among the reason why Irish people can’t buy alcohol in. a pub after 11:30pm during the week, 12.30am on Fridays and Saturdays and 11pm on a Sunday.
Our – sometimes troubled - history with alcohol is also the reason anyone looking to buy a bottle of wine, beer cider, Buckfast or whatever you’re having yourself in an off-licence must do so in a 11-and-a-half hour window from 10.30am to 10pm during the week with the opening time delayed until 12;30pm on Sundays.
But the times they are a changing, with the Minister for Justice Helen McEnteen in the process of modernising the laws around alcohol sales to allow for late night drinking and dancing up until 6am if people so choose.
But how is it that Ireland ended up with some of the most restrictive licensing laws in Europe?
And were we better off for them?
Historian Diarmuid Ferriter talks to In The News about the long and winding road from the Habitual Drunkards Act of 1879 right up to the present day.
