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

This is a missed opportunity. We have been speaking for a long time about public health policy in the context of alcohol consumption and the damage it causes to broader society. This is an increase in excise that will affect the off-trade and the on-trade equally. There was an opportunity to address the off-trade and below-cost selling, consider the introduction of minimum pricing and deal with the fact that a plethora of supermarkets are wholesaling alcohol to broader society, which is having a major impact. This is a budgetary matter but it could have been addressed. There was an opportunity to do so in the context of introducing minimum pricing, which is recommended by all experts who have looked at the difficulties Irish society faces due to the increase in alcohol consumption, particularly among younger people. It has been identified that their sourcing of alcohol is primarily from off-licences and supermarkets and that it has a damaging effect. In the context of this resolution, it would have been more appropriate, as a public health policy as well as a tax-raising initiative, to address the issue of off-licences.

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