Professor Aiden McCormick:

I echo what my colleagues have said. The issue of an increase in excise duty was raised. To be honest, that is something for which I was pushing in the college. When we discussed the issue further, however, a number of problems were identified, including that it would not prevent cross-subsidy and could result in below-cost selling. This would mean that if we were to increase excise duty, we would also have to ban below cost selling, which seems a cumbersome way of going about achieving the same thing. In my view, it would not address the social equality issue in that the same stratum of society would be affected.

On the point that 49% of the population, or females, are now drinking more, three or four years ago, along with the Health Research Board, we examined alcohol related mortality in Ireland by age and sex over the past 20 years. Rates in respect of every group have dramatically increased. The issue of on-sales and off-sales and whether it is better that young people go into bars rather than, as in the case of the students in UCC, drink behind sheds and go into town later when they are loaded up was also raised. While I agree that intuitively it seems like a bad thing to do, we do not know long-term if it is better that they do that and, one hopes, grow out of it or that they become culturalised into going to bars. There is an awful lot about alcohol that we do not know. We are doing our best with the evidence we have. Culturally, alcohol in Ireland is a different thing than it is in Canada, France or Italy. Perhaps the solutions elsewhere are not exactly the same solutions we should apply here. We believe the solutions proposed are the best and are evidence-based, but that is only the start. I am sure that in five years time we will be back here talking about what worked a little and what else we can do.

We have also called in our submission for a levy on alcohol advertising which could be used to fund proper research in this area.

It would enable us to figure out whether the measures we are taking are effective and to design new measures to deal with the problem. That is something we have not brought out but we should put it forward strongly. The levy would be a small amount. The companies spend between €50 million to €60 million a year advertising alcohol. A levy of 5% on alcohol advertising would yield €2.5 million a year to spend on high-quality research. It would mean we could produce reasonable data and reasonable plans within a few years. I strongly suggest such an initiative.

Intuitively, education is a fantastic thing but it does not work in my house with my kids. I preach to them day and night, yet my advice seems to go out the door. What seems to be important is peer pressure and example. It is difficult for parents to preach about alcohol to their children when they can open a press and see bottles of wine. When our friends come around, they sometimes drink more than they should. It is an us problem, not a them problem. We have a societal problem in that we have great tolerance for public drunkenness that I do not think we had 20 or 30 years ago. I do not know how we should address these problems. There is no policing of drunkenness any more. One can be drunk and disorderly all one wants and it does not seem to make any difference. This issue is tough for members, as legislators, as well as for doctors. No amount of talking to transition students is going to change that when they come home and see their parents doing the exact opposite.