1984 Revisited: Calling last orders on the holy hour

Crucially, the LVA stated that they had the backing of their colleagues in Cork, the only other conurbation where the holy hour was observed. Hostelry drinking by the Liffey and the Lee would never be the same again.

“The reason we want it abolished is there has been a tremendous increase in the food business,” Michael Madigan, chair of the LVA, explained in the aftermath of the momentous vote.

“We like to think that during the summer when tourists are here we are in a position to cater for them rather than asking them to leave at 2.30pm, not understanding exactly what our peculiar rules are.”

The holy hour struck six days a week between 2.30pm and 3.30pm. Sunday was the exception, when the sabbath was observed nationwide with a 90 minute moratorium on drinking. Visitors to either city during the week often expressed shock at the imposition of this hour that was for some reason associated with religion.

It was as if, within the limits of the respective conurbations, the citizenry collectively gathered to pray for the hour in a manner more familiar to religions from the east. But no, ultimately it had nothing to do with religion.

The only reason it was described as “holy” was to associate the temporary abstinence with a closeness to the Man Above who would presumably have approved of this 60 minute pause in imbibing the Devil’s buttermilk.

Its originator was Kevin O’Higgins, the first minister for home affairs in the new free State. O’Higgins was a man considered, in his legislative habits, to be a touch authoritarian.

By the mid 1920s, the smoke had settled on the Civil War and he and his colleagues were well on their way to fashioning a newly independent state.

Living in Monkstown on the southside of Dublin, it was his want to call in to his local, The Dropping Well, on his way home from a day’s work in Leinster House. According to an account of the pub’s history, the minister couldn’t help noticing workers from the local mills around midday on a Saturday, were making the pub their first stop on the journey home.

“As the afternoon wore on and conviviality blossomed into bonds of imbibing friendships, the laughter grew louder and thoughts of returning home to their loved ones were conveniently placed on the back burner.

One for the road became four or five and when eventually, on the proprietor’s firm words of encouragement, they rose to leave it was evident that much of the week’s hard earned labour was resting in the tills of P H Meagher [the proprietor]. O’Higgins was appalled at this, particularly as he himself regretted the sacrifices of time which he had to inflict on his young wife and family.

As O’Higgins saw it, what was sauce for him, was too much sauce for them, so he decided to do something about it. A liquor licencing bill was going through the Dáil at the time. He inserted a clause mandating the closure of pubs for the holy hour in the cities of Dublin, Cork, Waterford, and Limerick.

Confining the measure to cities was in all likelihood a betrayal of the prejudice of the day which dictated that country folk represented the real Ireland, where they danced at crossroads and did their drinking in the fields rather than the pub. It is unrecorded why Galway escaped the fate of the other cities but it may have something to do with a belief that men — and it was all about men in pubs in those days — from the west knew themselves when it was time to go home.

In 1962, Limerick and Waterford opted out, presumably on the basis of having acquired the kind of maturity that the long gone O’Higgins had yearned for the nation.

The man himself unfortunately didn’t live long enough to see the holy hour in action as he was assassinated in 1927, the year after he hit on the bright idea.

Brendan Behan, when he was in his pomp, noted with a lack of charity that “the politician who introduced the holy hour to the Dáil was shot dead an hour afterwards”.

So it was that time caught up with the holy hour in March 1984. The only constituency which mourned its passing were seasoned drinkers in the two cities who considered it a badge of honour to know a pub that would lock ’em in for the dry 60 minutes each day.

For these hardy souls, the holy hour was an opportunity to subvert the law. Taking it away left them bereft in the knowledge that anybody who wanted, and not just those in the know, could now drink the heart out of the whole afternoon, right the way through.