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Pub customers numbers up 11%
By Noel Baker
A NEW study into the effects of the smoking ban has found that pub customer numbers increased by 11% after the ban was introduced.
The study of 38 pubs throughout Dublin found that while staffing levels in pubs fell by almost 9% — 129 against 118 — after the ban was introduced in March 2004, 11% more customers visited the pubs — from an average of 59 to 66. It also found there was a huge reduction, 77.8%, in the number of people smoking on a visit to a pub.
The results of the study, entitled Smoking, Occupancy and Staffing Levels in a Selection of Dublin Pubs pre- and post- a National Smoking Ban, Lessons For All, have been published in the latest edition of the Irish Journal of Medical Science.
It was conducted by members of the Physics Department at University College Dublin and Dublin Institute of Technology, along with Prof Luke Clancy of the Research Institute for a Tobacco Free Society.
As well as measuring the fall in pollutants in the air since the ban, the team also visited the pubs in October 2003 and March 2004 and then revisited the venues on the corresponding time and dates one year later.
Prof Clancy said the findings showed that warnings from vintners’ federations of plummeting customer figures and drastic job losses were “ludicrous”.
He also said arguments voiced elsewhere that a ban simply displaced the problem elsewhere were also incorrect. “Smokers smoked less while they were at the pubs,” he said. “This shows that the ban has been good for people and it’s good for business, despite all the predictions of disaster.”
Donal O’Keeffe, of the Licensed Vintners Association, said industry figures would have shown a drop in drink sales and a fall in staff numbers in the first year after the smoking ban, but in the past six months there had been “strong stabilisation and growth” in the industry in Dublin.
He said more smoking facilities had been created and publicans had expanded the food aspect of their business to attract customers.
Vintners Federation of Ireland president Paul Stevenson said the data had “no relevance” to pubs in rural areas.