From the archives: Mayo councillor wanted pubs opened on a Sunday in 1947
By Tom Gillespie
SEVENTY-NINE years ago (October 25, 1947) The Connaught Telegraph reported that well-known Fianna Fáil councillor, the late Willie Cresham, from McHale Road, and an employee of Castlebar Bacon Company, brought a controversial motion before members of Castlebar Urban District Council - to ask the Minister for Justice to allow public houses in the town to open for a period on Sundays.
This, it must be remembered, was the era of the bona fide laws when travellers were entitled to get an alcoholic drink provided they were at least three statute miles from the place they slept the previous night. This resulted in people travelling the required distance to get an alcoholic drink on a Sunday.
The article was headlined ‘The Poor Man’s Pint’ - ‘Call For ‘legal Drinking’ - ‘Views of Castlebar Councillors’.
Mr. Cresham said they should not have one law for one section of the people and another law for another section.
In Castlebar, they had people just living some distance from the town and they could come into Castlebar on a Sunday and have a drink while the people in the town who wanted one had to take the car and go elsewhere.
It was not everyday that the working man got paid or had the price of a pint and surely he should be allowed to have the same as the man in the country, and have it in comfort, without being chased. It was only right that the working man down the country should have the same rights as the working man in Dublin or in other cities.
Councillor Michael Heverin said he did not agree at all with people getting drunk or the like, but for many reasons he would second the motion proposed by Mr. Cresham. He felt there would be more law and order and less drinking if the licensed houses opened on a Sunday from 12.30 to 2.30 p.m. and from, say 5 to 7 p.m., and closed strictly outside those hours.
He added: “To be honest about the whole thing, we must recognise that people will go and get in for a drink on a Sunday while the law stood as it did, so would it not be better to let the people do the thing legally?”
He continued: “At present (1947), the position is that people in town hired cars in order to go outside the three-mile limit. Some people even cycle out, and the council should support this position and let the people in town have a drink in peace and quiet.
Councillor Joe Chambers (chairman): A person can go out to the golf links on a Sunday and get a drink if he likes, but the poor working man cannot get a drink before his dinner on a Sunday but the Guards are after him. The ordinary person is quite entitled to his drink on a Sunday too, and why should others be able to get it just because they have more money?
Mr. Heverin said there were a lot of objections to the idea of opening on a Sunday, but would it not be better in the end to see people taking their drink legally.
Councillor J.J. Collins: Yes. Let it be done legally, but if you see a man going into a place during Mass, then keep that place closed.
Councillor James O’Quigley said he was not going to propose an amendment for the reason that the motion was ‘too bad to be amended’.
He said that as councillors they got a mandate when being elected to deal with water, sewerage and lighting for the town of Castlebar. But neither Mr. Cresham nor any other member got any mandate from the people to ask that public houses be opened on a Sunday.
He was sorry to see a young man like Mr. Heverin second such a motion, and he seemed to think in seconding it that drinking was good enough for a working man on Sunday, but Mr. Heverin himself would not go down the town on a Sunday and start drinking, and Mrs. Heverin quite rightly would be sorry to see him do it. The idea of this motion was to bring the working man into degradation by making him spend his hard-earned money on drink.
Mr. Heverin and Mr. Cresham wanted to make it appear that they represented the working man, but when there was fighting to be done for the working man, he never heard of Mr. Heverin, for instance, being in action at all; all he did was vote for Fianna Fáil.
Councillor Heverin said he supported the motion because he felt it should go through. He did not see why one section of the people should be deprived of luxuries or amenities which another section could get, and particularly the poorer section should get the same comforts as the others and the people in the towns the same as those in the cities.
He had said before that he did not want to see over-drinking; what he did want to see was people being able to get a drink legally rather that illegally.
Chairman: I am supporting that. It’s a good idea.
Mr. O’Quigley called for a vote on the motion, and Councillors Gussie Wynne, J. Gavin, Heverin, Cresham and Collins voted for the motion; Messers. Patrick J. Boyle and O’Quigley against.
The motion was accordingly adopted.