Irish Election are pleased to announce our collection of Irish 
Cafe Bars
Read more about: Fianna Fail, Law
From Fianna Fail: Nationwide youth cafés could stem growing yob culture in urban areas - Ambrose. This, coming from the party who think cafe bars are “a daft idea“. So basically cafes are great at curbing binge-drinking behaviour, but once a person hits 18 suddenly it “wouldn’t gel” and will make binge drinking worse, and the country needs Fianna Fail to restrict people’s liberty to their friends the publicans the traditional Irish pub which has no history or connection with binge-drinking, and you would be a fool and a communist to think there is.
Speaking from my point of reference on the steps of the Cashel Youth Cafe, the concept is oversubscribed and if three teens in my estate are any judge, this is a great idea.
Youth cafes have nothing to do with the cafe culture mooted by other politicians. In fact, the Irish cafe culture is well-removed from the French cafe culture or the California cafe culture. You cannot paint cafes with a broad brush.
I was back to the Kingdom over the Christmas and a topic of discussion was the passing of a local spot which we had all frequented as teenagers. This was in the mid 80s and the place was an arcade with about 20 odd machines (no gambling machines )and 5/6 pools tables, a jukebox and a long bench. It was open most days in time for the lunchtime school trade, though it closed some schoold nights about 9pm, it would be open Friday night until 1am and about the same on Saturday nights. About the worst that anyone did in there was smoke (of course, a bad thing in its own way for teenagers, but the place didn’t sell smokes), and it was the place to go on Friday night along with another similar though somewhat smaller place.
Now, the bloke behind it made money on the machies true enough but he owned the place so he wasn’t look to cover a huge rent so it was just the cost of the electric, one person to give out change and that was pretty much it. Now you wouldn’t find anyone looking to operate such a place without scalping the kids completely.
It is so much cheaper in the long run to have a place that teenagers can make their own.
While having someplace to hang out for the kids is a good idea, isn’t a cafe a pretty passive option? You’re just encouraging kids to sit around and spend money: once they’re old enough they’ll continue the habit in pubs.
Anyway, a lot of chip shops and arcades around the country already provide this function, much like the place Dan described in the post above. Having more and better-equipped ones is better than doing nothing, but can’t the government come up with anything more imaginative than cafes?
In some other countries every town would provide skate parks where kids can go to hang out. Apart from a social space for kids to call their own, it promotes health and fitness and a more active lifestyle. Seeing as everybody is up in arms about how lazy and fat kids are getting these days, skate parks or some other, more imaginative options would kill two birds with one stone.
This probably isn’t going to happen in Ireland, however, because the Government is scared about the lawsuits that would come in when somebody broke their leg.
So would parent stopping buying their kids TV’s and playstations and buying them footballs instead