Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I, too, welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill, although it is not the first Bill dealing with the issue of alcohol on which I have spoken. It seems we have a great deal of law covering the sale and excessive consumption of alcohol, drink driving and so on, but there is a lack of enforcement. One of the areas in which there is a serious lack enforcement is maintaining public order. Public order offences generally, although not exclusively, tend to be associated with underage drinking, certainly in the past decade or so. We tended not to take such breaches seriously. There was a tolerance and acceptance of it; people took the view, "sure they are only drinking like we do ourselves and they have to learn somewhere". They have learned that in the fields, open spaces and laneways and have caused major problems in terms of intimidating and frightening people, particularly old people. The problem has escalated to more serious vandalism and crime. I hope this legislation indicates an intention to be serious about stamping out public order offences, particularly when children are young. It is unforgivable that children as young as 12 are out drinking, particularly now in the summer when the weather has improved.

Other concerns related to excessive drinking include health and other societal issues, but the issue in question is specifically public order. I heard the Minister say during a radio interview yesterday that it is intended to codify all the legislation in this area. I welcome that move. I presume it will also include the legislation on the alcohol limit for drivers. The raft of legislation in this area is complex and all we are doing is making many lawyers rich. We are producing bad legislation because some provisions are inconsistent and, in many cases, contradictory. It is probably not surprising that the gardaí do not enforce many of our laws; there are so many of them.

The raft of legislation in this area must cause a major headache for gardaí right up to the Judiciary. Despite that, great frustration in this regard is experienced at local level. Councillors, in particular, bear the brunt of the dissatisfaction of members of the public over the apparent inability of the Garda to stamp out unacceptable social behaviour. Some years ago we were told the solution was to pass more by-laws to ensure that people were not permitted to drink in parks and open spaces and that the Garda would be empowered to act on foot of such by-laws. However, as soon as those by-laws were passed, there was some other barrier to enforcement of the law.

I remember in the 1990s, prior to my time in this House, when we thought we had cracked this problem with the introduction of legislation under which the Garda were given powers to move on crowds, but that too failed to fulfil its promise. Now we are again examining more measures. It remains to be seen if these measures are the ones we need. The nub of the problem as to why we have so much legislation and yet the problem does not seem to have been solved is that we do not know the cause of why Irish people drink so much. Clearly, we drink more than other nations. There is no gainsaying that, but until we know why that is the case it is hard to find a solution to the problem.

Whatever the cause, there can be no tolerance of crime, vandalism or any other drink-related anti-social behaviour. The problem is escalating because we have been so tolerant of it in the past. It is now endemic. Members, whether they come from the most rural or most urban area, report that the problems experienced are more or less the same. There must be zero tolerance of drunken behaviour. Whatever damage people do to themselves in their own homes, there can be no tolerance for drunken behaviour once it begins to impact on the quality of other people's lives and their right to enjoy a peaceful and non-threatening environment outdoors in parks and cities, as well as in their homes, because people are often attacked in their homes. I feel sorry for people who live in end houses because they seem to be persecuted by marauding gangs at night, pelting stones at their houses and breaking windows. We hear heartbreaking stories from people who suffer such anti-social behaviour week in week out. In the period between summer and Hallowe'en, life is hell for people who live in an end house or near an open space or laneway. To the extent that this legislation seeks to enforce the peace and maintain public order, I welcome it and I hope that this time we get it right.

There is a second stream to this Bill, involving measures that fall broadly into the prohibition area. They do not quite prohibit the consumption of alcohol, but they go down the road of prohibition, making alcohol more difficult to get, reducing the hours premises are open, locking it away and making it dearer. These measures are not aimed only at underage drinkers, but will impact on all responsible adults. I have serious doubts as to whether these measures will have any impact on the problem we are trying to address. Perhaps initially there will be a drop in sales but people will quickly adjust to altered closing hours and so on. I suspect all we will achieve is inconvenience for responsible drinkers and expense for retailers. I make this point not to speak on behalf of any vested interest, but because prohibition has never worked and I do not believe these prohibitive measures will either, particularly when they are imposed on a population which has a predisposition towards drinking to excess.

When one examines the evidence here and elsewhere, it is difficult to see that making alcohol less available or more difficult to get will reduce excessive drinking. In countries with almost complete and easy availability of alcohol at any time and in any premises, they do not drink like we do, yet in countries where there is a strict regime of access to alcohol, there are serious alcohol problems. I am thinking of some of the Nordic countries. Neither does the price of alcohol seem to determine how much we drink. Again, the experience here and elsewhere shows a correlation between cheap drink and relaxed drinking habits and between dear drink and serious alcohol problems. I am aware representations were made by various retailers, but we must be careful not to be drawn into arguments about below low cost selling and so on and then make decisions based on arguments that are really about competition between different types of outlets, whether it be the multiples, the low cost German retailers or RGDATA type members.

I do not know what are the cultural influences that cause us to drink more or how we can counteract them, but I suspect that going down the prohibition route is not the way to go. However, there is one group in respect of whom I most certainly support an absolute and complete prohibition and that is underage drinkers. This is where we can make a change by at least postponing access to alcohol. Such a change might allow their brain cells to develop normally, even up to 18 years of age, and might reduce anti-social behaviour and that ultimately might produce a cultural change if young people can be diverted into other appropriate forms of entertainment. It is absolutely unforgivable to sell alcohol to minors or buy it for them. We should pursue addressing that issue to the end. To buy alcohol for minors amounts to child abuse. No measures to tackle such abuse are too stringent or extreme.

It is clear that our children have absolutely no difficulty getting alcohol. We see them in our green spaces, parks and laneways drinking all summer long between now and Hallowe'en. Their conduct is characterised by drunkenness, raucous behaviour, open fornication in the fields, vandalism and joining rampaging mobs who terrorise innocent citizens and leave scenes of litter, broken glass and condoms in places where we are supposed to able to bring small children to play. It is intolerable and citizens rightly demand a better standard of enforcement against such behaviour. The tragedy is that in many cases the children we see drinking at all hours of the day and night are as young as 12 or 13.

It is not only young people who engage in such behaviour, and I do not want to overstate that it is always young people who are involved, but too many of them do engage in it and it is the worst possible start in life for them. Most of them survive having engaged in such behaviour and become responsible citizens, but too many are swallowed up by this culture of irresponsible, brutish drunken behaviour and lose respect even for themselves, never mind others.

The one measure that can stop underage drinking and is supported by evidence throughout the world, which is absent from the Bill, is a national identity card system. It is incomprehensible that this one, fail-safe measure continues to be resisted. All the arguments against such a scheme — that it is a right-wing proposal that is restrictive of personal freedoms and so on — have been refuted. On the contrary, it protects personal freedoms and may protect our children. There is a myriad of good reasons for the use of identification cards, such as ease of travel, improved efficiency of administration of all State services, reduced fraud and, crucially, as an anti-terrorism tool. However, none of these is more important than the compelling need to protect our children from excessive and unsupervised drinking.

The existing voluntary scheme involving the Garda identification card is an absolute farce. It has no standing among young people and offers no protection either to them or to alcohol retailers. Every teenager in the State knows how to acquire a fake identification card. This has been the position for years and it has spawned a huge industry for replacement birth certificates and passports, with a sudden increase in the number of lost passports. There are undoubtedly other dubious spin-offs of which we are not even aware.

The Bill introduces the concept of test purchasing. I have no objection to this provision, which seems a reasonable proposal in the absence of an effective identification card scheme. However, it is an acknowledgement that shopkeepers and off-licence owners can be fooled and that the current Garda identification card scheme offers no protection.

We could stop the sale of alcohol to young people overnight via the introduction of an official, non-reproducible card containing a computer chip with personal information. This Bill is concerned with curtailing anti-social behaviour associated with alcohol, most of which involves underage drinking. The single most efficient measure in this regard is the introduction of an official identification card. It would leave sales outlets, which receive so much criticism, with absolutely no excuses. I am confident such a scheme will eventually be introduced, but this Bill represents a missed opportunity to do so. We cannot continue to ignore a measure that would undoubtedly be effective.

The Bill contains measures I welcome, some of them dealing with inadequacies in earlier legislation. I welcome the provisions which give gardaí powers to seize alcohol and to anticipate public order offences by requiring offenders to desist from drinking where the consumption of alcohol can reasonably be expected to lead to a crime. The absence of legislation allowing for this type of anticipation of crime was one of the issues which tied the hands of gardaí in the past in regard to public order offences. There was no point in residents reporting incidents of underage drinking and anti-social behaviour because it was necessary for gardaí to witness the offence being perpetrated in order for action to be taken. This will be a useful measure until such times as gangs of young drinkers realise they cannot continue to behave with impunity and that the Garda, with the co-operation of local communities, is serious about enforcing the law.

I welcome the outbreak of common sense in respect of the amendments which the Minister has either introduced himself or accepted from the Opposition. These include the changes in regard to the sale of wine, the operation of early houses and the code of practice measures that will be implemented on a trial basis by retailers.

See this speech in context