Beamish and Crawford .. its been Quangofied??

And so it has come to pass - that venerable, traditional Cork City Brewery Institution is to be closed by another younger traditional Cork City Brewery which itself was taken over 25 years ago or so. Murphys Brewery aka Heinekin recently took over BEAMISH & CRAWFORD ... the ink is hardly dry on the documents when today ( 4/12/2008 ) Heinekin announces they are closing BEAMISH & CRAWFORD .. For good:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/1204/breaking77.htm

As I said on other forums:

And one also has to ask about the Competition Authorities role in all of this. They allowed one stout manufacturer IN THE SAME CITY to take over another one. And the real irony - Beamish were under license brewing Miller, Fosters and Carling - so Heinekin / Murphys for a while were brewing their own competition. Laughable - even my neice of 4 could have told the competition authority what the net result of this takeover was going to be.So yet another of the 800 or so useless quangos has buried another business and added to the dole queue further.

This is indeed a black day in the History of Cork City - "Beamish & Crawford is located on South Main Street in Cork city centre and is the oldest operating brewery in Ireland. It began trading there in the 1690s." - from Irish Times above.