Someone seems to have been doing a trawl. We got asked by a Senator who appears to have been asked the same question, presumably by the same person. We replied:
[quote:2vu5cbnw]Thank you for your e-mail, it's wonderful to see the rising of interest in Irish craft beer.
There are two main issues for your correspondent to get to grips with. The main legal one is that he or she will require a Beer Manufacturer's Licence from the Revenue Commissioners, so the first point of contact should be with the local office who can talk them through the details. Unfortunately for all start-up microbreweries the licence comes with a number of legal hurdles which make it difficult for new entrants to the industry. Among them is the requirement to have a bond in place for their first year's potential revenue liability in advance. The banks, as I'm sure you understand, are not as amenable and flexible on arrangements like this as they have been in the past. Other jurisdictions, including Northern Ireland, do not have the bond as a barrier to entry for new breweries and it's an issue we would very much like legislators such as yourself to examine.
The second major hurdle is the hostile market conditions for microbreweries in Ireland. The odds are very much stacked in favour of the large established players. Our licencing laws which fixed the number of pubs back in 1902 have created a highly risk-averse market, and the number of publicans willing to stock a new, untried product is unfortunately low. For most Irish artisan producers there is a route around this sort of retail scepticism by selling direct to the public, either from the place of manufacture or at farmer's markets or similar. However, this path is denied to Irish brewers and cider makers for no good reason we can see, again due to our antiquated licensing laws. A microbrewery may not sell a visitor a bottle of their artisan beer, yet the same visitor can buy a six-pack of lager in the neighbouring petrol station. The latest government proposal to treat alcohol as a public health problem instead of encouraging responsible consumption will further exacerbate the difficulties for potential entrepreneurs in this sector.
We hope that will be of some use to your correspondent and please pass on my contact details to them. While Beoir is a consumer group rather than a trade association, it is our role to highlight small independent breweries and point customers towards them so anything we would be happy to do anything we can to support a new Irish microbrewery.[/quote:2vu5cbnw]
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