A survey showed that Irish women drink 8 times as much alcohol as Italian women, hence the worse shape. Obvioulsy there are stunners here and mingers there but I am speaking "in general". Beer guts on women is such a turn off especially when they, for some reason, wear belly tops.
Anyway, the euro has no influence on economic growth, Ireland's economy has been growing at over 5% for a decade, have low unemployment and a survey last week showed us to be the second wealthiest people in the world (damn Japanese

Being in the EU has nothing to do with your pub hours, beer drinking etc, if anything mainland Europe is less anti-smoking than Britain. They do drink less though.