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Hamish Champ: Wanna go tie-free? Check out the Emerald Isle 

last week I meets an investment type who knows the Irish pub market quite well. After talking about the state of the UK licensed trade we gets to chatting about pubs in the Emerald Isle.

Many, he said, were suffering. No doubt because of the smoking ban, I opined knowingly, ready to roll out facts and figures about the effects of the ban on the licensed sector versus the cost to the Irish economy of treating people whose lungs have the consistency of a loofah and who gozz up bucketloads of pale green phlegm every day.

Nope, he replied. It was largely because many licensees had signed commercial leases with their landlords at the height of the Celtic Tiger Boom Thang(TM). While these were all fine and dandy at a time of the economic surge the country was then experiencing, in the current market conditions they were proving to be unsustainable. Not smoking then, but onerous leases. Sounds familiar doesn't it?

It's my understanding that there is no pubco model in Ireland similar to the one you'd fine here. It's all free trade.

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