*Pat O’Brien. Photograph: John Mangan
CULTURAL CHANGE and a lack of young customers are the biggest challenges facing Clare publicans according to the former owner of The Blacksticks Pub, Pat O’Brien.
O’Callaghans Mills native Pat put the key in the door for the last time in 2018, bringing an end to years of good times at the isolated bar on the back road to Feakle.
“This pub was famous back over the years, it was O’Driscoll’s that owned it, Paddy O’Driscoll and his wife Biddy. It was always famous for traditional music and rural life really, you’d have a lot of farmers that would come in for a loaf of bread or a pound of tea, a pound of butter, they might have a few drinks and stay a bit longer”, he recalled.
“Paddy O’Driscoll died suddenly in 1979 so his wife Biddy ran it until 2001. She got ill then and I leased it from her. The hunt used to come, they’d be two or three East Clare hunts, harriers and East Clare hunts and I was here one night and it was by accident really I took it over. She got ill then and she didn’t want to keep the place closed up so she asked me would I rent it. She passed away in 2001 and it went up for sale then and I bought it and I had it then till about 2018 and I closed it then”, the Mills man continued.
Situated on an isolated country road between the Mills and Feakle, the Blacksticks was previously listed as one of Ireland’s Best Pubs by The Sunday Tribune in the 1990s and received further praise from The Clare People in 2007.
Pat who is now heard weekly on the airwaves of Scariff Bay Community Radio said there are many challenges past and present facing publicans in Co Clare.
“You had a lot of elderly people around coming in at night time and they’d have a few drinks and go away again. As they passed away then, the whole culture changed. Then you had the smoking ban and that didn’t help people either. The drink driving then was a big thing. There isn’t a kind of culture of taxis in the country, maybe this age group would take a taxi but the older group wouldn’t really think of calling one”, he explained.
In spite of these hardships, O’Brien tried his best to keep the business going. The Blacksticks was well known for its lively traditional music sessions despite its small size and was a regular haunt for East Clare Hunts throughout the year. Members of the local gun club were also frequent customers. The pub’s unique location led to challenges in customer renewal, situated miles away from popular tourist destinations on the west coast of the county.
“I remember here when I was young, there was a huge amount of English people who used to come here fishing. You have a lot of lakes around the area and a lot of coarse angling. They all have died away and weren’t replaced by younger people. There’s no renewal. I don’t know if it is the government or the tourist industry that should be pushing it a bit more but they never came back”, said O’Brien.
On government supports, Pat believes that the State has a bigger role to play in helping to keep these rural enterprises open. “They should be [helping out] really. You’ve to pay tax and rates and VAT and everything. The price of electricity, it’s very challenging for publicans to run a business, it’s very challenging now. The ones that started doing food are probably doing a bit better than the ordinary pubs”.
Thirty percent of Clare’s pubs have closed in the last twenty years, a statistic that makes for stark, albeit unsurprising reading. The hills of East Clare are no different as a shift in culture and lack of youthful customers continues to put up for sale signs across the region.
“There were sixteen pubs in Tulla one time and there’s only three of them now and they don’t be open during the day at all. Here in O’Callaghan’s Mills, only just over the road I can remember five over in the village and the one here is six, there’s only one now. Scariff was a big town one time for pubs as well and I’d say it’s gone down to three now. There’s two in Broadford, Kilkishen the same way, there was four or five there one time. There was a huge cultural change. Young people don’t go to pubs now only for a special occasion”, O’Brien added.
