“It would be a lively pub,” says James Avery, a bartender at Mary Wards. “It’s one of these places you feel you can come to the pub, on your own, and have a bit of fun.”

But lately, Mary Wards hasn’t been as lively of a pub. Business is down, according to Avery, by about 20 percent. That’s in line with other rural Irish pubs.

The Vintner’s Federation represents Irish pubs, and the organization estimates the drop-off has been between 15-30 percent for 2012, although exact figures won’t be available until this April.

Farmers used to park tractors outside Mary Wards during lunch. The parking lot these days is empty during the day. (Photo: John Sepulvado)

The slowdown is being blamed, in large part, on transportation. Many longtime rural customers don’t want to drive to or from the pubs because they don’t want to get arrested for drunk-driving. The Irish government began implementing tougher drunk driving laws in 2005. The head of the Vintner’s Federation, Gerry Rafter, says it’s easy to understand the business hit by looking at the typical farmer.

“He might spend five hours in a night playing cards or chatting with his neighbor, and have two or three pints and drive home maybe on a bike, or maybe on a tractor,” Rafter says. “He’s not going out anymore. We need to keep the fabric of rural Ireland alive, and the pub is an important part to play in that community role.”

Some rural politicians have been quick to take up the call of the isolated farmer, as they push their local councils for looser drunk driving laws. The proposals vary, but generally most would allow local police or even bartenders to issue a type of rural driving permit, allowing the pub goer to consumer up to three drinks and still drive legally.

Kerry Councilor Danny Healey-Rae is leading the charge. He says because rural roads have lower speed limits and are less busy, slightly intoxicated drivers could still travel safely compared to their urban counterparts.

“They should be treated differently to the other general public that have more means of transport,” Healy-Rae says.

The problem is the numbers don’t bear Healy-Rae and others arguments out. Before the tougher drunk driving laws, there were about 400 crash related fatalities each year on Ireland roads. About 70 percent of those happened in rural areas between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m., prime drinking times.

Not one of those accidents, according to the National Roads Authority, involved a bicycle or tractor.

Meanwhile, in 2012 there were a record low 162 road fatalities in the entire country.

Many country roads in Ireland are barely large enough to fit one car on at a time. (Photo: John Sepulvado)

With those statistics on hand, the message from the government to the local politician has been ‘get real.’ Alan Shatter is Ireland’s Justice Minister, and he says the social lives of farmers don’t trump the possibility of drunk driving deaths.

“There’s no question, of this government, or indeed, any future government, facilitating individuals drinking in excess of the blood alcohol limits,” Shatter says. “Reducing fatalities on our roads must always take precedence over promoting the social consumption of alcohol.”

Kerry County councilors voted to let rural residents drive a bit drunker. The plan still needs central government approval, which Shatter has refused to grant.

Despite the objection of the central government, at least three other rural counties, including Galway, are considering similar measures to allow pub-goers to get special permits that would allow them to drive with a higher blood-alcohol level this month. While the proposals seem designed to highlight the plight of the rural pub-goer bartender James Avery says even if the law was changed customers would be resistant to driving drunk.

“Everything has gone too regimental now,” Avery says. “You’re being told to be home at such time. You can’t drink and drive. You’re relying on someone else to get you to the pub and from the pub? Why bother? Stay at home.”

Or, as one farmer at the pub put it, who is going to be dumb enough to go to the police station, tell the police they’d like to drink and drive, and ask for a special permit to do so?

Northern Ireland law prohibits surgical abortions, so the doctors will give patients a pill, and if there are no complications, send the women home after a few hours. The women will have to show the pregnancy is a risk to their physical or mental health, and that conception occurred no more than nine weeks prior.

The clinic, operated by Marie Stopes International, will also offer other reproductive services, as well as crisis and sexual counseling. Marie Stopes, a British organization similar to Planned Parenthood, opened the clinic despite intense opposition from anti-abortion groups, including Pro-life Ireland and the Catholic Youth Defence.

Yet, despite full page advertisements from those groups, as well as orchestrated phone calls and emails to political leaders, demonstrations and picketing, the abortion clinic opened Thursday at lunchtime as scheduled.

If it weren’t for the approximately 200 anti-abortion demonstrators peacefully protesting on the sidewalk, there would be no indication the clinic is located on Belfast’s busy Great Victorian St.

“There is no way a building would have been built back in Dublin 20 years ago, or Belfast, or anywhere on the island,” says 42-year-old Irish educator Barbara Kennedy. “The priests would’ve been, I would imagine, in the pulpits, on the Sunday, saying ‘you’ve got to go against this,’ and people would have listened.”

“But you no longer go [to the church] for your moral guidance,” says 42-year-old college lecturer Fiona King.

“No, we’re not as influenced by it,” agrees Kennedy.

The women, like many others in urban centers, say the Irish clergy lack the moral standing, after numerous scandals in Catholic and Protestant churches, to effectively mount a campaign against the clinic.

Many Irish pastors and priests, like Trevor Brock, acknowledge that religious influence on the island is waning. Brock is the pastor of the Belfast Great Victoria Street Baptist Church, located just two blocks away from where the abortion clinic. He describes Irish Baptists as ideological cousins to the conservative Southern Baptist Convention in the United States. Like the majority of those members, Brock’s fiercely opposed to abortion.

Yet, Brock says he has no plans to talk about the clinic’s opening during this Sunday’s service.

“I probably won’t mention it all,” Brock says. “To make big blanket statements, I just don’t see the value of that.”

Brock also doesn’t plan on protesting the clinic, or urging his parishioners to protest.

“It doesn’t show much compassion to people who need compassion on the ground,” says Brock. “We’d rather work through the issues and think our way through them and talk to folks face to face, then enter a confrontational battleground scene.”

The protesters that did show Thursday took an almost gentle approach. Organizers went so far as to urge the group not to litter, or drop their cigarette ends on the sidewalk.

“We respect [the clinic’s] right to operate … under the law of man,” says Michael Tiller. The 53-year-old came from Cork, a six-hour car ride to protest the clinic. “But we value life, and God’s law, and that must come first.”

Opponents like Tiller fear the clinic will lead to more liberal abortion laws, and attitudes. Abortion is illegal in the Republic of Ireland, and UK official health statistics show more than 6,000 Irish women travel to England for surgical abortions.

Only 43 abortions, according to those same records, were performed at hospitals in Northern Ireland in 2011. Marie Stopes International does not expect that number to dramatically increase as a result of the clinic’s opening.