Dr. Patrick Kenny:

The legislation was introduced earlier this year.

On the issue of websites, we need to consider what happened with tobacco websites in the United States some years ago. Here there are no effective age restrictions on access to alcohol websites. I have visited some websites which state users must be aged over 18 years. However, browsers are even offered a date of birth that is exactly 18 years prior to the date of their visit to the site. This means, for example, that a browser visiting the site today, 24 March 2015, would automatically be given a date of birth of 24 March 1997, which would allow him or her to click to proceed. Users do not even have to be able to substract 18 years from the current year. Irish alcohol websites could certainly be required to operate an effective age verification system. This could be done through credit card referencing or one of the specialist companies that provide this service.

On the strictness or otherwise of advertising codes, while I welcome the copy clearance system which was introduced approximately 12 years ago, it is not perfect as I believe advertisements that are in breach of the code continue to be approved. Research that shows that marketing influences consumption is not predicated on these advertisements breaching regulatory codes. I presume, therefore, that all of these advertisements are approved under the codes, yet they still have an impact on consumption.

The lack of strictness lies in the area of audience thresholds of 25%. For me, the key age group we need to consider is those who are ready to experiment with alcohol. The average age of initiation with alcohol is 15 years. If we take a cohort encompassing several years before and after the average, let us say the population of children aged between 11 and 17 years, we find that, according to the most recent census, this age group accounts for approximately 9.8% of the population. As such, any threshold figure that is above 10% potentially allows for a disproportionate targeting of teenagers who are in the zone where they are ready to experiment with alcohol.

We are sometimes told there is no evidence that sponsorship affects consumption. I query that view. While it is certainly true that there is much more evidence that examines advertising on its own, research that studies only one form of marketing is somewhat deficient because one cannot control all of the other types of marketing to which a person has been exposed. Recent studies examine the effects of cumulative exposure to multiple channels of marketing, numbering 12, 15 and sometimes more. These studies show that the larger the number of channels of marketing, including sponsorship, to which young people are exposed, the more powerful the impact of marketing on consumption.

Sponsorship is similar to social media because it allows for a high level of engagement, much more so than passive traditional advertising. It is often argued that a ban on sports sponsorship would lead to a shortfall in funding. While this possibility is certainly worth considering, it is noteworthy that minimum pricing would increase revenue. Given that this additional revenue must be directed somewhere, perhaps some of it might be ring-fenced to make up for any shortfall in funding for sports that would arise from a ban. It is also worth remembering that other companies will step in to sponsor sports bodies.

On the question of how to get across the message about not drinking to excess, we must examine the impact of marketing on social norms. There is absolute consensus in the literature that our perception of what is socially acceptable and common are two of the biggest drivers of behaviour in many areas of life, in particular, alcohol. One of my arguments is that the fact that alcohol is so widely promoted and the industry sponsors sport tells us something culturally about the acceptability and normality, as it were, of alcohol consumption. I am not anti-alcohol - it can play an important part in social life - but when one is communicating to people, especially young people who are involved in sport, a message that it is okay for sport to be endorsed by alcohol companies, one is doing something to the culture.