Dublin seems determined to destroy its golden goose

It sounds batty but we’re rapidly getting to the point where, if you want to enjoy a night out in Dublin, the cheapest way to do it could soon be to get a taxi home all the way home to Galway when you’re finished.

Because a hotel room in the capital is the price of a weekend away (with flights) to any other European city, and the hospitality sector seems hell-bent on making minced meat of their own golden goose.

Of course it’s even cheaper if you get the bus back, but that means, like Cinderella, you’d want to be good to go at midnight – or else, like a member of the Rolling Stones, you’re happy to find a spot to party until the first one of the next day at 6.45am.

If you make the last City Link at midnight, you’ll be home two and a half hours later for €18 if you don’t book in advance – or €13 if you do.

If you want the train to take the strain, you’d better be in Heuston by half seven, which only works if your idea of a night out is a late lunch – but that would only set you back €16. The lunch is your own problem.

A cursory glance through some of the hotel booking websites show that the average price for one room for one guest, without breakfast, is around €330.

There are some lower, and if you’re prepared to move a little out from the action around the city centre, that could come in marginally under two hundred quid.

But equally, you could pay a multiple of that.

Take a random date – October 31 next year; nothing exceptional at all about it even if it is Halloween, and anyway you’d have thought that in the depths of winter, with people saving the cash for Christmas, there might be easy and affordable availability.