Galway In Days Gone By

Too many pubs

The Commission which the Irish Free State Minister for Justice appointed last February to report on the reform of the liquor trade is understood to recommend a drastic reduction in the number of public houses.

At present, there are 13,000 licensed premises in the Free State – one for every 230 inhabitants. The Commission suggests that the proportion should not be more than one to 400. This would mean cancelling of 5,000 licences.

Compensation, it is suggested, should be paid and the amount needed should be raised not by taxation but by a levy on the remaining licence holders. It is further suggested that the bona fide traveller should not be entitled to buy a drink on Sundays before he has covered ten miles.

Trading hours will also come under revision, the most important innovation being the proposed closing of licensed houses from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

1950

GAA stadium plans

Both the Corporation and the G.A.A. officials who have been endeavouring during the past couple of years to negotiate the transfer of 21½ acres of South Park to the G.A.A. for conversion into a first-class G.A.A. stadium hope that within the next few weeks, all remaining legal problems in the way of transfer of the property will have been removed.

Sport – amateur as well as professional – is big business now in nearly every country and even though the G.A.A. is an amateur body Gaelic football and hurling have developed, for good or ill, as spectator games. They mean big business for those centres that can provide facilities for the major competitions and cater for the big crowds that follow those games.

County Galway has already two grounds – one in Ballinasloe and the other in Tuam – capable of accommodating the enormous number of people who follow the two main codes fostered by the G.A.A., and it is regrettable that Galway city, the main centre of population in the province, a centre that should be a much better nursery for hurlers and footballers, should be without such a stadium sixty-two years after a County Galway selection had played in the first All-Ireland hurling final played under the auspices of the Association.

Pictured: A group of Leaving Certificate students from Loughrea photographed on June 20, 1967.