‘Use it or lose it!’

Those are the words of Dr Ignazio Cabras of the University of York’s management school, who along with a group of British researchers is currently half way through a year long study of the Irish Pub.

They will be looking at the vital economic role public houses play in rural communities. In an interview with the BBC he stated that “Local communities should understand using a pub is a matter of ‘use it or lose it.’

The group have just completed a study of English pubs and said initial results had indicated a “positive correlation between the presence of pubs in rural communities and the amount of socio-economic activities and social and community cohesion”.

He said pubs were and “incubator for a huge number of activities, such as business initiatives and charity, voluntary and sporting events’. Local bars were, he said “an important generator of social capital and community cohesion, which are important characteristics that you find in healthy communities”.

The IVintners Federation of Ireland, (VFI) are paying for the Irish study and the preliminary findings will be presented to the wonderfully named, 2013 Beeronomics Festival, which the University of York is due to host in September.

You can read the article in its entirety on the BBC website.