Mr. Padraig Cribben:

The Chairman is correct in identifying the significant cultural change in the way that people learn to drink and how they apply it during the early stages of their drinking life.

Statistics will show that people are starting to drink at a younger age. Let me put it in context, some 93% of all the pubs in Ireland are family owned businesses. They operate in communities and by and large their customers are either neighbours or friends or sons and daughters of neighbours and friends. They have no great interest in peddling alcohol to very young people. I openly suggest that the alcohol that is being sourced for the very young people is not being sourced, by and large, in pubs. It is sometimes dangerous to generalise but there is a shift in culture whereby the target for some people is not social drinking but how quickly they can get drunk. That is a major challenge for the members of the Vintners Federation of Ireland. Equally, another major challenge is pre-loading, the concept I mentioned earlier. One does not know the extent to which people are pre-loaded when they come into the pub. If they are looking for a quick hit, that is a problem that is different from the situation in the past.

Moreover, when they do come in, they are seeking what one might call a quick fix or a quick hit. That problem certainly is different from where it was previously and is one that requires significant different levels of management on behalf of licensees. However, it is a major problem.