Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

How on earth can the Taoiseach speak about separating sponsorship of sports events by alcoholic drinks companies from marketing and be serious? What is the point of the sponsorship by the alcohol companies except to market their product? More fundamentally, is it not perverse in the extreme that major alcoholic drinks companies are allowed to advertise freely and use massive funds to advertise the product ethyl alcohol, which is by far the most destructive drug in society at present? People who push illegal drugs are despised and denigrated in the media. However, the biggest legal drug pushers of all are the major alcohol companies and they are lionised and validated. Does the Taoiseach not see a huge contradiction in how his Government and the establishment have for decades and generations treated alcohol companies?

Can I ask the Taoiseach to agree that it would be very socially progressive to ban all advertising of alcoholic drinks products and to confine information on alcohol in any advertising to places where alcohol is and should be available to people? It should not be glamorised and outed in the way that is done at present. How can the Taoiseach seriously talk about divorcing the general advertising of alcoholic products from appealing to children? Does he not see on the national television channels, for example, that by far the most expensively produced, technically brilliant and artistically imaginative advertisements are usually those for alcohol? Given that they incorporate colour and movement and invoke themes that attract children, such as the heroic legends of the past, how on earth can the Taoiseach speak about a type of alcohol advertising that does not attract children?

I am by no means an abolitionist. Alcohol is a pleasant product. It is a good substance in its place. People should have the right to enjoy it. The lethal side effects of alcohol unfortunately have to be recognised. In my view, any drug of this power should be publicly owned. It should not be the source of private profiteering by privateers. Any excess made in the sale of alcohol by a publicly owned entity should be devoted to education, harm reduction in relation to that drug and health remediation where unfortunately there are casualties of it.

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