Death of Ireland's Holy Hour brings good news to Dubliners

Nation's Restaurant News, August 22, 1988 by Mort Hochstein

Death of Ireland's Holy Hour brings good news to Dubliners

DUBLIN, Ireland -- The big news here is that the Holy Hour is no more. There have been other developments in this summer of Dublin's 1000th birthday. For one thing, restaurants scan now serve beer, a privilege formerly allotted only to pubs.

And on one of the busiest Saturdays fo a year devoted to the Dublin Millenium, bartenders in this city of 1,000 pubs settled a contract dispute that could have shut down taps and disrupted the entire social life of the Irish capital.

But it's the end of Holy Hour that has drinkers and publicans celebrating. Hour Hour was the unofficial name for an officially mandated closing time between 2:30 and 3:30 each day. It was a bad time of day for Dubliners who conduct most of their social intercourse over a pint and a bar stool.

Dublin's lawmakers scrapped that law this summer and also took away the virtual monopoly on beer held by the pubs. Now, for 3,000 Irish pounds, about $4500 American, restaurants can sell beer in addition to wine and spirits. Only a few have added the plumbing needed to sell draft.

The strike that didn't happen was set for July 9, a day in which the whole town was turned into one large street fair in which hundreds of thousands of visitors thronged city streets and lingered late for the big event of day--a huge fireworks display sponsored by Guinness.

The city's 3,000 union bartenders settled for a $17-a-week, raise instead of the $45 and shorter hours they'd been seeking. Even though the cost of the contract was less than anticipated, most Dubliners are unhappily anticipating a "tuppence" rise in the cost of their favorite brew.

Despite the lifting of the ban, also timed for that busy Saturday, many pubs will retain the traditional Holy Hour closing--some because of convenience and habit, some because owners don't foresee much added business from the extra hour. Most of the pubs that do stay open are family-owned and operated. A quick survey found some very quiet during Holy Hour, while others were loud with the sounds of true believers drinking a late lunch.

At Doheny and Nesbitt's, one of Dublin's most famous pubs, Tom Nesbitt regretted the passing of the mid-afternoon break. "It used to be a great help sometimes when you had a bunch of people who were getting jolly. We had an hour to get the place cleaned up again. But that doesn't happen now."

This is a country where 80 percent of the beer sold is keg, as compared to the United States where 80 percent is sold in bottles. Even the official residence of the Lord Mayor, Ben Briscoe--son, incidentally, of Dublin's famed Jewish Lord Mayor of the sixties, Robert Briscoe--has its own set of beer taps.

This is also a town and a country where Guinness is king. It owns the stout business, just as its other principal label, Harp, is the nation's leading larger. Guinness also bottles a batch of other lagers and ales for Irish consumption, as well as Budweiser and several European labels.

The usual call in a pub -- "I'll have a pint," or "I'll take a jar"--automatically means Guinness. Its plant in Dublin in Europe's largest and most modern brewery. Wooden vats and wooden kegs exist only in its newly completed museum--which will probably rival the Book of Kells as the city's major tourist attraction. The Guinnes plant on a site near St. James Gate, which Arthur Guinness leased for 9,000 years in 1759, is all stainless steel and computer-automated.

I have visited another of the world's great breweries, the Pilsner Urquell plant in Czechoslovakia, and the contrast between the open wooden vats and labor-intenstive techniques at Pilsen and the 21st century, high-tech polish of St. James Gate in Dublin is amazing.

Guinness is one of the nation's leading employers and tax payers. At the Harp plant in Dundak--perhaps a fourth the size of the headquarters plant in Dublin--tourists pass vats and a sign noting that those vats generate 500,000 Irish pounds--about $750,000 dollars--daily in taxes. Two revenue agents are assigned each day to the Harp plant.

Lord Mayor Briscoe could not have been more hospitable to our group of visiting journalists and to his city's largest employer. He posed for the camera, happily accepting a case of Guinness Gold Lager and drinking the beer, which is not produced for domestic consumption. It was introduced this summer for the American market and there is little possibility that it will be sold at home for many years, although Irish beer drinkers are showing a greater interest in lighter beers.

Guinness Gold is the firm's first lager in its 229-year history, and is now, available only along the Eastern seaboard. It's made at the Harp plant in Dundalk, which is struggling to keep up with what officials call "two to three times the demand we expected." The Harp plant, incidentally, produces Kaliber, a non-alcoholic beer sold in the United States and Ireland.

Guinness might have put a greater promotional push behind Harp in the United States, but that brand is showing great growth on its own. The Harp that comes to the United States is slightly less bitter than the domestic version.