Dracula Creator’s Relative Seeks Dublin Memorial

The Victorian Gothic novel Dracula is associated with the dense forests of Transylvania rather than the Georgian squares of Dublin, but the great great nephew of its Irish born author thinks that is an oversight.

In time for the centenary of Bram Stoker’s death, which will be in 2012, Dacre Stoker has begun work to raise money to erect a memorial to his ancestor to join the statues and plaques commemorating Dublin’s many other writers, such as James Joyce and Samuel Beckett.

“It’s an oversight. There is no permanent memorial in his home city to this guy,” Dacre Stoker, who lives in South Carolina, United States, told Reuters by phone.

Bram Stoker was born in 1847 in Dublin, where he lived until he moved to London when he was 31.

He attended Trinity College before working as a civil servant in Dublin Castle and as an unpaid theater critic for Dublin newspapers.

Irish Pubs Face Hard Times

Ireland’s famous pubs and pints are reeling from their worst year yet, a report found — and the really bad news is it does not guarantee an end to drink-related social and health problems.

Against the backdrop of deep recession and unemployment, Ireland’s per capital alcohol consumption fell by 9.6 percent in 2009 and is now 21 percent below an all-time peak in 2001 when Ireland’s economy was booming.

“It was the worst year for our industry in living memory,” Kieran Tobin, chairman of the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland (DIGI), told a news conference in a central Dublin pub.

Pubs have been closing at the rate of around one a day, he said, and 15,000 jobs had been lost across the sector over the last 18 months.

Last year’s drinking decline follows a 7.7 percent decline in per capital consumption in 2008, while in volume terms consumption declined 8.9 percent in 2009 after a 5.9 percent drop in 2008, the report by Anthony Foley of Dublin City University Business School for DIGI, which represents the on-trade — pubs, hotels, restaurants — and off-license sector.

At Long Last Ireland To Assign Postal Codes

Ireland plans to assign postcodes to each home in about a year’s time, becoming the last European country to do so, in the hope of giving western Europe‘s worst performing economy a small boost.

The once-booming ‘Celtic Tiger’ has been seeking ways to improve competitiveness and stop multinationals moving more production to lower cost centres such as in eastern Europe.

“We’re the only country in Europe which doesn’t have a postal code … and we like that in a nostalgic way,” Communications Minister Eamon Ryan said.

“But the reality is it’s not efficient and it doesn’t work well,” Ryan told public radio RTE. “We need to move to a new digital economy, postcodes are part of that.”

Proponents say postcodes would not only make mail delivery more efficient but would also help other businesses that rely on the exact tracing of goods in the export-reliant Irish economy.

“There are a lot of corporations internationally who would be very anxious to piggyback on the back of the new system once it’s in,” said John Whelan, chief executive of the Irish Exporters Association.

Greetings From The Emerald Isle

Your Daily Andy Editor-In-Chief is off for a few days.  Publication will resume on March 30.

Happy St. Partick’s Day From Ireland

An estimated 500,000 Irish people, immigrants and tourists lined up along a parade route in Dublin to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day — a national holiday dimmed this year by an economic recession and rising violence.

Ireland faces its sternest economic challenges in decades. Unemployment has soared above 10 percent, the government is imposing severe tax increases and cuts to combat a budget deficit, and the national mood is struggling amid rising emigration and violence.

Cardinals and bishops emphasized that the island’s 4 million Catholics must pray on St. Patrick’s Day for an end to Irish Republican Army dissident attacks that claimed three lives this month in the British territory of Northern Ireland — and an end to drug gang feuds in Dublin that have left eight dead this year.

“St. Patrick’s Day provides a moment to reflect on the fragility of our times and our future — if we place our trust in egoism and self-centeredness,” said Catholic Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin.

He called for everyone on the island “to send an urgent and unambiguous message that as one community, north and south, without distinction of belief or of political allegiance, we are united against anyone who takes the path of violence.”

The parade is the climax of the six-day St. Patrick’s Festival.