Dr. Helen McAvoy:

I will quickly respond to the question about Amsterdam and the situation in other countries. We can only plan our legislation for our own country, in one sense. More than half of people in Ireland who drink are hazardous drinkers. We are increasingly seeing that the health risks from alcohol exist even at low levels of consumption. We only need to plan for our own population, in a sense.

Dr. Reynolds and Dr. Gilhealy talked about studies around closing times in Amsterdam and an increase in alcohol-related injuries. I know that Amsterdam reintroduced an alcohol sales ban in its red light district in 2021. It has also published a new alcohol Act, within which the Dutch are looking to restrict the sale of high-strength alcohol in certain areas and after certain times.

More broadly, there is a question as to whether there is a sweet spot that can be found through compromise or amendments to the Bill to support a vibrant nightlife and healthy night-time economy while also protecting public health. I do not know if there is such a sweet spot. We need a health impact assessment to look at all the health risks and consider can they be mitigated or not. We need to take our time and see what are the health effects and consider if they can be mitigated. The Public Health (Alcohol) Act took a record amount of time to go through and we are still considering if some of those measures will come into force. They are being challenged every centimetre of the way. It is disingenuous to proceed with the Sale of Alcohol Bill when we have not yet enacted the legislation that was put in place to reduce alcohol-related harm. That is the sweet spot to me, in a sense. Can we complete the Public Health (Alcohol) Act first before we start thinking about increases in licences?

There is no public health representation on the night-time economy task force. There is no public health criterion proposed in this legislation. The Bill refers to "drunken persons", which is Victorian and stigmatising language. We need to think about combined drug and alcohol use, and different types of intoxication. "Drunken persons" sounds like something from the 1958 legislation, which I think is where it came from. We need to modernise how we think about consumption and the people who are intoxicated and harmed. Those are my main points. There is no limit to the number of licences or additional hours that can be provided under this Bill. I agree that very few places will take up the option of a 5 a.m. close. However, we are likely to see many late bars. We need to think about what some of this might look like in areas of high density.

There are areas we need to look at. We need to have the time to gather evidence and think about it carefully.