Cork publican: Pubs are adapting and becoming the 'third space' 

I’ve spent most of the last 20 years in pubs. I work in one, I socialise in them, and even when I’m not in my own, it’s often the default place I end up.

That’s given me a long view of pub culture - not nostalgically, but practically - and a chance to watch how people use pubs, and how that use is changing.

At one point in Ireland, the pub filled a very clear role. You had home. You had work. And then you had the pub. Somewhere you could go without a plan, without company, and without having to explain yourself.

It wasn’t perfect. It was often male-dominated, centred heavily on drinking, and not always welcoming in the way we’d expect today.

But it provided something that’s surprisingly hard to replace: a shared social space that didn’t demand much of you.

For a while, it looked like that role was fading. Cafés expanded. Coffee culture took off. Working from home blurred the line between professional and personal life. People drank less, went out later, and headed home earlier.

There was a sense that pubs had missed their chance, that habits had shifted for good.

What’s become clearer more recently is that something else is happening instead. Pubs are learning, and people are changing how they use them.

It’s not a dramatic reinvention. It’s more a quiet broadening of what’s acceptable. Sitting with a board game. Having a coffee in the evening.

One of the big advantages pubs have in Ireland - and one we often overlook - is space. We still have plenty of them, and many are physically quite large.

Unlike a café with ten seats that needs to flip tables to survive, most pubs can afford to let people linger.

If you want to spend an evening chatting, reading, or just being out of the house, there’s usually room. That space matters socially as well as economically.

One of the most underrated aspects of pub culture is that you don’t need a group to belong. You can walk into a pub on your own and be perfectly comfortable staying that way.

You might pass a comment to the person beside you about a goal on the television, the weather, or whatever’s happening around you. You can tell very quickly whether that interaction is going anywhere, or whether it ends there - and either outcome feels natural.

There’s an unspoken social understanding in pubs that allows conversations to grow, or gently stop, without awkwardness. You can engage, disengage, or simply exist alongside other people.

You’re on your own, but you’re not alone.

Interestingly, some of the people who seem to understand this best are those who didn’t grow up with Irish pub culture at all.

In my experience, people who move here often adapt the pub to their own needs more easily than we do. They think nothing of ordering a coffee or a soft drink. They don’t feel self-conscious about playing a board game. They don’t feel the need to leave the moment a drink is finished, or to justify why they’re there. They’re comfortable sitting at the bar counter without being regulars.

Any social awkwardness around ‘how you’re supposed to behave’ in a pub just isn’t there - and that’s a good thing.

On a week night in a city pub, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if people who have moved here now outnumber those who grew up locally. And when I say ‘local’, I mean local in the truest sense: they live here, they work here, and the pub has become their third space.

That’s happening quietly, without much fuss.

Loneliness isn’t confined to one age group. It affects people across society. More people work from home. More live away from where they grew up. More move frequently, or live in house shares, or keep irregular hours.

Even people with busy lives and full calendars can feel isolated.

In that context, having access to a shared space where you’re recognised - not fussed over, not interrogated, just known - matters. Getting to know the staff. Seeing familiar faces once or twice a week. Exchanging a nod, a few words, or nothing at all. Being around people without having to perform.

The pub, at its best, offers exactly that.

The heavy days of big drinking may be largely gone, but if you get enough people into a room - using it differently, staying longer, feeling comfortable - the economics can still work.

Pubs don’t need everyone drinking pints all night. They need warmth, bodies, and a sense that people want to be there.

None of this requires pubs to become something they aren’t.

It may just require time -time to evolve, time to let habits change, time to allow that quiet magic to happen again.

The Irish pub’s greatest strength was never just alcohol. It was the fact that it offered a place between home and work - somewhere you could go without obligation, and without being alone.

Things are moving in the right direction. With a bit of patience, they just might keep going.