353) O'Neill's of George's Street Upper, Dún Laoghaire, South County Dublin

Partial to changing its name, this one, since its establishment in 1930. Previously known as, variously, depending on your decade, The Lion Bar and Grill, Burke's, Mooney's and Scott's Cafe Bar. We visited during a massive rugby match, and the congestion did little to endear the pub to us as we crammed into the counter and struggled to be served. The sight of a dead bird in a cage, swinging nonchalantly from the high and sloping ceiling, provided a morbid and macabre grace note, summing the place up with gloomy eloquence. A deeply dark and narrow pub, thick with exposed brick. 

Winningly, however, the quality of the Beamish proved to be a marked improvement on anything we had found in Dalkey, and for this it may be granted a begrudging star and a half for effort. Andrew Stephens visited the leaky toilet and was suitably disquieted by the attentions of some very young and very cheeky little girls, ostensibly playing in the corridor outside but none too shy about sneaking glances through the door at the urinal and its attendant urinators within. How innocence is lost.

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