NUIG pledge to take on ‘irresponsible’ Galway pubs

Date Published: {J}

BY CIARAN TIERNEY

The NUI Galway authorities have pledged to object to the licences of city pubs who deliberately target students with low cost alcohol promotions after unofficial ‘Rag Week’ celebrations resulted in 41 arrests last week.

Although student leaders at both NUIG and GMIT voted overwhelmingly to ban Rag Week festivities this year, a minority of city pubs were accused of capitalising by organising all-day drinks promotions.

Gardaí were forced to clear one pub, the Hole in the Wall on Eyre Street, at 7pm last Tuesday amid health and safety concerns during a ‘Donegal Day’ event which began at 11am.

Later in the week, they were asked by staff to close down the Supermac’s premises in Eyre Square for some time after management expressed concerns that the premises had become overcrowded with student revellers.

Some pubs are understood to have used social networking sites such as Facebook to organise an event called ‘Social Week’ which had no backing from the College authorities or students’ unions.

“It is clear that some pubs and clubs have behaved very irresponsibly in deliberately attempting to create a College Week of their own making and in promoting low cost alcohol to students,” said a statement from NUI Galway at the weekend.

“ It is the university’s intention to write to the Vintners’ Association and ask them to publicly reprimand those involved in deliberately targeting students with such promotions.

“It is also the intention of the university to object to future licence to be awarded to these establishments. Students have reported individually to University management that they were targeted by pubs in a very irresponsible manner.”

The number of students arrested in the city last week (41) was actually ten more than during the corresponding week last year, when NUIG President James Browne called for Rag Week to be abandoned.

Gardaí said yesterday that, while the number of arrests was up, the scale of the problem did not reach the levels of the previous two years when residents expressed concern over the number of loud house parties in areas such as Newcastle and Renmore.

“The problem did not reach the scale of the previous two years,” said a Garda spokesman yesterday. “We had 41 arrests which were directly related to ‘Social Week’. It was worse last year, when there were awful problems in some housing estates. Quite simply, we had enough of it.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.