Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their presentations. As the Joint Committee on Health and Children, we are charged with scrutiny of legislation such as the public health (alcohol) Bill. For maybe too long, we have been discussing the harm done to our people by alcohol abuse and excessive drinking. It is an issue that is endemic in our culture and we must address in the best way possible policies, legislation and other mechanisms to discourage people from excessive drinking and to encourage safe drinking. The broader issue of advertising is interesting. No business will spend money on advertising unless it is successful. Mr. Dooley refers to it being 3% of the overall advertising budget in the country but the multiples are also advertising alcohol in their advertising campaigns. They spend 8%, one quarter of which is alcohol-related if we take the amount permissible under various codes. It is a substantial sum of money.

Do we accept alcohol is causing damage to citizens and society? We heard empirical evidence presented to the committee over many years about the dangers of alcohol consumption to the health of the population and last week's evidence was damning about the profile of people presenting with cirrhosis of the liver. It is an alarming development and seems to be because of excessive alcohol consumption among younger people and the trend towards more women drinking. The evidence for that is the fallout in hospitals and on Saturday nights. The key question is how to bring forward policies and support or enact legislation that diminishes the consumption of alcohol in the population. To date, we have failed to do so.

The issue of off-licences has been raised by Mr. Doorley. Every Deputy and Senator knows that when off-licences pop up, almost immediately we have problems with anti-social behaviour and other problems from the fallout of excessive drinking in the immediate environs of off-licences. There are off-licences that are responsible and carry out detailed checking of customers' age but the bottom line is that people can legally walk into an off-licence at 18 years and buy industrial volumes of alcohol. This happening day in and day out in our country. That permeates into the peer group of the purchaser, whose friends can be 15 or 16 years. Large volumes of alcohol are available to under age people from legal purchase. We must be conscious of this.

This brings us back to why so many young people are participating in binge drinking on a regular basis. There is a cultural aspect to this that has been here for a long time but alcohol advertising has a role in it. There is no doubt the target audience is not a 74-year-old man drinking two pints of Murphy's or Beamish in a pub in Cork. The younger audience is the target for advertising companies and the drinks industry, something we must be conscious of. Does anyone support us lifting the ban on tobacco advertising? Do we think we should be allowed to advertise tobacco freely without inhibition or legislative blocks? I do not think anyone would propose this as we all know tobacco is bad for people and we should do everything in public health policy to try to discourage people from taking up smoking. The same applies to alcohol. That is our responsibility.

Diageo came out with Senator Jillian van Turnhout's least favourite campaign and it suggests there is a reaction by some drinks companies to the fact that we are, incrementally but continuously, moving in a direction to try to clamp down and discourage binge drinking and the broader consumption of alcohol in society. I am also concerned that it sends the wrong signals that, somehow, these companies are doing it for society's good as opposed to trying to ward off the inevitable move to addressing the advertising of alcohol and the targeting of young people.

With regard to off-licences, Mr. White says single off-licences are not included in the code of practice and they seem to be problematic. Statistics and evidence show that it is a major problem. Is there any way of bringing them into the code? What is possible? There seems to be broad compliance with the code by large multiples. While they are separating the drink element from groceries and the rest of retail, it is a prevalent and obvious place to purchase alcohol, which is being done in industrial volumes in some cases.

What I find strange about alcohol advertising in sport is that we never saw Sonia O'Sullivan advertising a pint being good to gee her up for a 1500 m race. We never see sports people saying that the reason they are great hurlers is that they drink four or five pints or five or six half pints.

We all know that elite sportspeople and athletes are very much opposed to alcohol consumption, yet we piggyback on every sports occasion to drive home the promotion of alcohol consumption to younger people. It is a fundamental flaw - I am not making a political point about the Government - that we have not bitten the bullet in accepting that sports advertising is targeting an audience, normally a younger one, when it comes to drink promotion. That is something we have to accept and deal with.

Mr. Doorley's organisation represents a huge number of youth organisations throughout the country. Is the National Youth Council of Ireland ad idemon the full banning of alcohol advertising at sports events? If so, is it drawing these conclusions from the evidence it has looked at in terms of the impact it has on members? Will Mr. Doorley share that information with us?