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Alcohol sales fall

beer-bottlesConventional wisdom tells us that people spend more on ‘vices’ during a recession, drowning their sorrows with booze, fags, scratchcards and the dogs. However it looks like things are going against conventional wisdom here (as they so frequently do) – the Irish Times has reported that alcohol sales are showing an ‘unprecedented’ fall. There certainly were some quite dramatic figures:

The largest decline was in spirits where sales declined by 19.1 per cent. Sales of beer were down 12.4 per cent while sales of cider and wine fell by 12 per cent and 10.6 per cent respectively.

The Drinks Industry Group of Ireland blame cross-border shopping for the loss in sales, as well as the economic downturn. I haven’t been booze shopping up north, and I don’t think my consumption has changed much in the last six months – but haven’t we all been very aware of the high price of drink here for quite a while?

5 Comments

  1. Our wine consumption has fallen significantly since we became a single income household. We’re now on three bottle a week from about six before Christmas. I gave up beer too for weight reasons more that the money.

  2. the irish government is directly to blame for this by increasing excise duty on wine every budget.

  3. I shop up north regularly for drink – 3 bottles of wine for £10 is quite common up there while my local Londis’ cheapest bottle starts at €9.99! Beer is much the same – 18 bottles for £10 is hard to beat.

  4. Bulmers have dropped the price of their pint bottles.

  5. Why is it that the price of practically everything is falling in this country, but yet the publicans promote their self-adopted price freeze as a ‘good thing’? Ridiculous. It’s time for the pubs to get competitive again. Oh and bring back the 11pm closing time for off-licenses.