Why don't rural pubs provide a night bus service?

It was tried near here. Too expensive and a pain the #$£& sitting on a bus going all around the area, delayed at every stop by drunks too busy with BS to get off, before you get home. And you had to wait until the bus was going after closing time.

My grandfather had one of those 80 years ago. Sat into the cart and the horse knew the way home.

I hope he was able to unhitch the cart and take off the harness. There was a story in the locality where I grew up about a man who used to do that and leave the poor donkey outside the door until the morning. But one time he woke up from his stupor to find the donkey and cart standing at the end of his bed. It is probably an apocryphal tale, with versions like this one in circulation around the country:

"There was man living not far from us, he must be dead these 50 years now. As long as he was able he’d never miss half nine mass in Bartlemy of a Sunday morning - you could set the clock by him. He’d walk over to the Chapel leaving about nine and after a bit of colloguing outside the gate he’d be back before 11. The same man had a grand little donkey and cart for drawing sticks maybe a few bags of ration to fatten the pig.

Well one Sunday a few of the local fly boys arrived when he was just gone down the road. That time nobody locked the door and this man didn’t and hadn’t. The cafflers took the two wooden wheels off the donkey cart and then removed the axle from the frame. They then took the cart into the kitchen and put back on the axle and the wheels. Next they brought Neddy the donkey in from the field tackled him to the shafts of the cart with straddle and all the other bits of tackling. Across the road then to await the return of the devout Mass-goer. He wasn’t inside the door when they heard the roaring and screeching and cursing and swearing.

Well lads the poor man was out of his mind. All reasoning and reckoning was gone and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how the donkey and car had got into the kitchen - on their own! He was about to take the sledge and knock the gable end wall to get animal and beast back out when one of ‘the boys’ morryah was passing the road, coming from Mass, and heard all the racket and commotion. The poor man explained his dilemma and the other man scratched his head several times before coming up with a solution.

“If we un-tackled the donkey and dismantled the cart and took it out bit by bit,”

“Well ‘tis you have the brains surely.”

Shur why would a robot want to live in the schticks?

I actually expect to see them in rural areas first. There is high speed internet either FTTH or Wireless covering about 98% of the island nowadays.

A few pubs I know have done this service, but it rarely lasts long. I used to regularly get a lift home from a Dublin Landlord. He was special though. Thinking outside the box at a time when even Dublin pubs were closing.

Urban areas will be the last places in Europe to have autonomous vehicles. Rural areas will have them long before they are in cities.

You can get a local area hackney licence for €70. If no one is willing to spend €70 to get 100% of the fare there'll be feck all people willing to give up 20% of the fare to Uber. Then you have the same issue as the mini buses, people live too far apart for it to be viable.

This is correct. Doesn’t bother me but I hear lads saying it would cost them € 32 ( taxi fare to and from pub ) to drink three pints costing € 14 .Does not compute.

Rural society is getting what a small number of people wanted- the closure of all rural pubs . Easier now to get cocaine than a pint of stout in some areas .

It would be great in theory but probably not viable. I just checked Google Maps there, I live 2.3km from my local but it may as well be on the moon due to lack of taxis. Think I have been in it once since Covid - brother and I walked down on a nice summers evening and walked back around 11 or so with hi-vis jackets and lights - about 25 minutes each way. Road is decent enough and relatively straight but not very safe all the same - would be a little nervous to come across a drunk driver or a boy racer thinking he's in the WRC. Also not appealing on a wet winter's night.

With two young kids at home, the wife and I hardly never go to the local. When we do get someone to mind the kids we would prefer to head further afield into Limerick which is our closest urban area.

We do what many couples in rural Ireland do - get some off-licence beers or wine with some snacks and watch something on the TV. I justified getting a nice big screen OLED as I spend so little money in pubs these days.

I'm still p*ssed off and cynical about MUP - I think it was more about trying to protect publicans than trying to protect the public's health.

You don't have a clue how uber works do you?

So you don't have any idea how Uber works, gotcha.

I was talking to a guy from rural Galway lately and he told me his local pub offer a bus service and it works.

I don't think Uber coming in will suddenly create a flood in the market, but it will open up a side hustle for lads who don't mind the side hustle or the smell of Guinness farts.

10 10 euro trips isn't going to make anyone retire at 35, but as a side gig, doing Uber eats as well and then a couple of early morning airport/bus runs without the overhead of a plate/radio/rank fees and being able to work your own schedule? I don't think you'd have a problem finding lads to do it.

A taxi is 7.40 before you get into it if you order through free now, Uber should easily be able to price themselves lower than that, plus it's prepaid so if you find yourself in drunken slumber you don't wake up to a 90 euro fare.

And the other publicans being too tight to pay a share of the bus, that doesnt surprise me either.

The bus is free.

I heard of a good system over the weekend that's operated in a Kerry pub a friend of mine works a few shifts in. The pub owner provided a car, emblazoned it with advertising for the pub and offered his locals the opportunity to sign up for a lift-share system.

Members of the scheme volunteer to be the designated driver of the car once a month (or thereabouts) and can avail of free soft drinks in the bar that night and on the basis of being part of the scheme, they then have the right to be dropped home from the pub (or collected to be taken to the bar) for a fiver any other night of the roster. I'm sure there are rules around what counts as a local trip etc. but according to my mate it works very well for everyone involved.

I'm not 100% on the technicalities of it, it's possible I have some of the details wrong, the story was relayed during a lenghty session tbh but I've seen the car so know the basics of my description of it are correct.

It's possible they've gotten legal advice and are using some legal loophole like making it a "club" whose members contribute subs towards covering the running costs of the car rather than a fiver per trip or so on but let's be honest: it's (semi) rural Kerry. Worrying about legalities isn't exactly a priority down there ime. ;)

I hadn't wanted to name the pub in case it was operating in a legal grey area but there's press articles about it and the schemes was created in conjunction with the VFI and Guinness so presumably their lawyers had the i's dotted and the t's crossed in how it operates:

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/this-will-get-rural-ireland-back-on-its-feet-kerry-community-launch-free-community-taxi-for-pub-goers/38777785.html

I do it, it depends what kind of drunks they are, you can have a bit of craic with them if they are sound and good fun but if they are ar$eholes its hell.