It was shortly before the New Year when I walked into an old Dublin pub, ordered a pint and sat down to contemplate the future, as you do around this time of year.

The thought process was slow and as I waited for the pint to arrive I noticed that there were two televisions blaring from two corners of the room, and in a third corner a big flat screen was lit up with an advertisement for some new foreign beer I'd never heard of before.

Then the intrusion of music blaring from a loudspeaker somewhere joined the cacophony of the over-excited racing commentator and when the barman got slightly bored he jacked up the noise levels still further.

The smell of bubbling soup wafted around the room and suddenly I no longer really wanted the pint or the loud music or the third rate cross-channel soccer on the screen.

My New Year contemplation ended with the conclusion that the traditional Irish pub is dead.

Maybe it was the smoking ban or the drink driving that finally killed it off, but it was already dying a lingering death, suffocated by the publicans insatiable desire for loud music and big screens.

I remember when the rot set in -- it was around 1985 and all these publicans were going to New York and there they saw 'Irish' pubs with a television in each corner and a few desultory customers and they said to themselves 'I have to go home and start annoying my customers' with endless soccer games and the constant racket of foreign news.

Every time I hear that eejit Dara O'Briain on a radio advertisement going on about what a great place the pub is on a Friday night I want to strangle him. In recent years publicans have almost single-handedly killed the art of conversation.

Pity the poor tourists, lured to Ireland by the promise of sparkling conversation, witty rejoinders or even cantankerous but philosophical arguments about the great subjects of our time -- politics, religion, sport and Bertie's finances.

Instead they are greeted by a wall of sound, second division soccer games, all weather racing and Sky News turned up full blast reporting on some disaster on the other side of the Universe and a few old regulars so stiff with drink they haven't really noticed that the new Millennium began a few years ago.

This unfolding disaster has been ignored by Failte Ireland and the authorities, but the unfriendly, profit-at-all-costs attitude of Irish pub owners is already wreaking havoc on the tourist industry, we just haven't woken up to the disaster yet.

Oh there are still a few pubs out there worth visiting, but as Dr Johnson said about the Giant's Causeway 'it's worth visiting but it's not worth going to visit.'

There was a sensible suggestion a few years ago by Michael McDowell to do something when he proposed a new 'café bar' licence, but this was, of course, shouted down by the powerful pub lobby

And so we sat at home over the Christmas (and the New Year) and each man woman and child of us downed three bottles of wine -- well I suppose not all the children did -- so that means the rest of us drank far more.

And wine isn't really an Irish drink. It does not suit a personality which has been forged on a bar stool in McFeely's of Drumconrath or some such 'real' pub over a pint of stout or a ball of malt.

The Irish problem with wine is that we don't stick our noses in it and swill it around in the glass for hours like the French, or sip one glass while talking endlessly like the Italians and then go home (or to the mistress).

We drink the stuff like it was beer and so we're all sitting around at home bleary eyed by eight o'clock in the evening. Ah let's have another bottle, we cry, and lash into the stuff until our teeth are blackened and we're astray in the head and the children are fighting over the Wii.

Don't talk to me about the hangover the following morning.

Of course it's not only the pubs that are dead.

The golf clubs and the yacht clubs and their fancy bars are virtually empty in the evening. The old retainer polishing the glass is fondly remembering the good old days when a man could have three pints after a bracing game of golf and still drive home without causing an accident.

But that is all gone now, swept away by the nanny state. Now most people are afraid to have even the one pint, in case it might drive them mad and they'd order another one and then surely be over the limit.

Is there a future for the pub? Not the traditional Irish pub. It's dead. Some will do well as restaurants and quasi-coffee shops; others have become small dance venues and clubs and others will just meander on offering a refuge for the hopelessly alcoholic.

Like the Irish language there will be a smattering of traditional pubs scattered around the country, struggling on in the old way and patronised by the few of us old enough to remember what it was really like.

And when we sit down for a pint we'll hear the ticking of the clock or the conversation of old men talking about the way it used to be before women got the Four Wheel Drives and it was OK to be openly gay.