No booze, please, we’re Irish

Forget dry January: one out of four Irish adults does not drink alcohol - at all. A growing cultural desire to go out but leave bleariness and hangovers behind has given rise to a new wave of alcohol-free festivals, dance clubs and outings of all kinds

Vaughan Yeats and Oisin Davis, who will open Dublin’s First Alcohol-Free Bar, The Virgin Mary, next month Pic: Fergal Phillips

Sobriety sells. Whatever stereotypes are stubbornly sticking around Irish people’s relationship with drink, the stats don’t lie. We’re drinking less. A whole 25 per cent of the Irish adult population don’t drink alcohol. At all.

There’s a clear non-drinking market that, up until recently, has been ignored. With health ...