Funeral home joy for Chawke
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of 2024.” When asked if they were planning similar increases, Heineken, which brews Murphys, Moretti and Coors, said: “We don’t comment on commercial terms.”
The pint price increase comes as the Licensed Vintners’ Association denied there is resistance to the proposed legislation allowing for the late-night sale of alcohol to be scrapped.
Backbench Fine Gael TDS Michael Ring and Charlie Flanagan have called on the new leader of their party, Simon Harris, to pull its policies back towards what they call its “core values” including discarding the proposed late night licensing laws that have been in development over the last few years.
This move would be the opposite to calls from the sector to allow venues to open later to bring rules closer in line with other European countries. The General Scheme of the Sale of Alcohol Bill,
Michael Ring published in 2022, said the legislation would help revitalise the night-time economy after the pandemic.
For pubs, the legislation means they would be allowed to open until 12.30am seven nights a week.
Currently, they can ordinarily open until 11.30pm Monday to Thursday, 12.30am Friday and Saturday, and 11pm on Sundays.
A late bar permit under the new legislation would give permission for opening hours to extend to 2.30am, the same time currently allowed under the existing rules.
Speaking to RTE Radio One’s This Week programme on Sunday, Ring said: “Fine Gael has to go back to its core values. Fine Gael has, in my opinion, been too left for too long.
Goatstown complex
ONE of the country’s best-known publicans, Charlie Chawke, has secured the green light for a funeral home beside his Goat Bar and Grill in South Dublin.
Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Co Council gave the Goatstown funeral home the go-ahead despite opposition from Fanagans Funeral Directors. Mr Chawke said: “It is always great to get planning permission. It has come through now thank God.”
He said a funeral home operating from the ground floor of the former Paddy
Power unit at the retail complex
“would be good for business at The Goat”.
He said: “I had this idea going back a while that a funeral home would be good for the business where people coming to a funeral can dine in The Goat after.”
Mr Chawke said that “there is plenty of room” for a funeral home at The Goat to serve the area. He added: “Why anyone should object against it I don’t know.”
Mr Chawke intends to lease the space out to a funeral operator.
Fanagans have been contacted for comment.
Forget about a lot of these social issues we have been raising... annoying people MICHAEL RING ON GETTING FINE GAEL BACK TO CORE VALUES
We’re not a left party, we’re a centre party, and I think that Fine Gael has to move back into the centre again and more to the right.” He identified several areas he said the party should focus on, including “supporting small businesses”.
However, he also said he wants to get rid of “this daft idea of opening pubs all night” and said the party should “forget about a lot of these social issues that we’ve been raising over the last number of years, annoying people and upsetting people”.
On Saturday, former Fine Gael Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan tweeted that the party’s values do not include “all-night drinking”.