Publicans peeved at Race Week dockside carnival

By Dara Bradley

City publicans who rely on the Galway Race Week bonanza to sustain their businesses throughout the winter are fearful that a new Carnival festival with live music at the Docks will ‘hoover up’ 3,500 patrons from their premises during the busiest nights of the racing festival.

Details of the Galway Race Week Carnival at the docks were unveiled last week causing some disquiet among rate-paying publicans in the city, who traditionally depend on a booming Race Week drinks trade to keep them profitable.

There are fears that the Carnival, which will have a bar, food area and live entertainment ‘big top’ tent with a 2,000 capacity, as well as a children’s Ferris wheel and funfair, and cater for 3,500 customers in all at a time, will take business away from long-established bars, pubs and restaurants that are open all year.

The Carnival runs from Thursday (Ladies Day) until Sunday July 31, and opens for families from noon daily; with free concerts on Thursday and Friday and paid-for concerts on Saturday and Sunday when The Stunning and Legendary Horslips are the headline acts. The adult-only evening concerts begin at 6pm and the bar must cease trading at 10pm. There will be pizzas, burgers and other food served in stalls on site.

It is not known whether Diageo, the owners of Guinness, have secured the ‘pouring rights’ for the event but the company is understood to be supporting Carnival through promotion and advertising, which has irked some of its long-term publican clients in the city.

Carnival, which is being run by Hotel Meyrick Fagan’s Bar in Eyre Square, caught publicans off-guard because it didn’t need to publicise in local newspapers that it was applying for an occasional drinks licence. The event is being run on private property owned by the owners of Hotel Meyrick, and the licence granted was an extension of the hotel licence, which doesn’t need local newspaper publication.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.