Mr. Donall O'Keeffe:

On the issue of under-age drinking, it is clear from a publican's perspective that it is illegal to sell to people under 18 years of age. The majority of publicans accept their responsibility in that regard and the sanctions for getting it wrong are quite serious. That is the way it should be. Publicans should not knowingly serve under-age people, and the majority do not.

On one specific issue regarding under-age access to alcohol, we would support measures such as labelling of off-licence point of sale and closed circuit television, CCTV. They make a modicum of sense, if not perfect sense. We have legal opinion to suggest that labelling on the can or the bottle is of limited evidential value in court. It highlights the origin of the product, and if there is a consistent pattern in that regard, it points the police in the right direction, but it will not, in itself, solve the main problem. The LVA perspective is that the licensing regime of the off-licence sector has collapsed. There has been more than a tripling in the number of off-licence outlets since 2000. The State has lost control from a licensing perspective. There is a far bigger issue here in terms of every convenience store, garage forecourt, corner shop, barber, department store, off-licence and multiple retailer selling alcohol. Everybody says availability is a factor in alcohol abuse, and if there is an explosion in the number of outlets, a removal of the ban on below-cost selling and alcohol is used as a loss leader to price promote and drive footfall, it is inevitable that the issues we have with under-age drinking and the public health and public order concerns associated with alcohol abuse will explode.