Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of People Before Profit, we are supportive of the overall aims of the Bill and pretty much all of the measures it proposes. There is no doubt about the health and societal implications of excessive use of alcohol. The World Health Organization states drinking alcohol is associated with risks of developing health problems such as mental and behavioural disorders, liver cirrhosis, some cancers, cardiovascular diseases and injuries resulting from violence and road crashes and collisions. A significant proportion of the disease burden attributable to alcohol consumption arises from unintentional and intentional injuries, including those due to road traffic crashes, violence and suicide, and fatal alcohol-related injuries tend to occur in relatively younger age groups.

In 2012, approximately 3.3 million deaths, or 5.9%, of all global deaths were attributable to alcohol consumption. Harmful alcohol use is the fifth leading cause of death and disability worldwide, up from being the eighth biggest cause in 1990, so the problem is getting worse. Every ten seconds somebody dies from a problem related to alcohol. Many more develop alcohol-related diseases. Here in Ireland there are three alcohol-related deaths every day. The public cost of alcohol is significant. In 2013, alcohol-related discharges accounted for 160,000 bed days in public hospitals. That is 3.6% of all bed days in that year, and it compares to 55,000 bed days, or 1.7%, of total number of bed days in 1995. There has been more than doubling of the number of alcohol-related discharges and bed days related to alcohol.

The cost to the taxpayer of alcohol-related discharges from hospital is €1.5 billion. That is equivalent to one in every €10 spent on public health in 2012. This excludes the costs of emergency cases, GP visits, psychiatric admissions and alcohol treatment services. An estimated 5,315 people on the live register in November 2013 lost their jobs due to alcohol use, and the estimated cost of alcohol-related absenteeism was €41 million in 2013. A separate review commissioned by the Department of Health found that alcohol-related illness costs the health care system €800 million in 2013.

It is right that we should take the issue extremely seriously and recognise it for the major global and national health problem it represents. The Government bringing forward this Bill indicates a desire to take it seriously. I cannot help but contrast the sensationalism around medicinal cannabis that we got from some of those expressing concerns about it, as against the failure to dramatise just how serious is the alcohol problem. This is something I said during the debate on medicinal cannabis because many of those who tried to cast concern about Deputy Gino Kenny's medicinal cannabis Bill did so on health grounds. Frankly, some of it was tantamount to scare tactics, when we compare what I have just described regarding what is known about alcohol with the fact that cannabis use does not cause cancer, no deaths are attributed to it, it does not produce diabetes or heart disease and it has many medicinal uses.

I would like to see some balance and proportionality in the debate on these issues, and a recognition that the advantages of medicinal cannabis significantly outweigh the dangers. This is not to say there are not some dangers with medicinal cannabis but, frankly, some of the debate on the Bill failed to put those things in proportion for somewhat opportunistic reasons in my opinion. That is just an aside. The more important thing is the health and societal implications are very serious, as I have said, and the evidence is there to back it up. In this context, the measures the Bill proposes are positive.

I absolutely support the labelling of alcohol with health warnings. Advertising having to include health warnings is certainly a step forward, and the restrictions on advertising for alcohol are all steps forward, as are the restrictions on sponsorship and advertising on television and radio, but we should go much further. None of the alcohol companies tried to meet us, because we would tell them where to get off. We do not give a damn about the impact of any of these measures on the profits they might make because the health case is simply unanswerable, as is the societal case. It is a good thing to reduce alcohol use for all sorts of reasons and, therefore, we do not care about health measures impacting on the profits of these companies. We would like to see a complete ban on advertising and alcohol-related sponsorship.

The health dangers of alcohol are at the same level as those of cigarettes and it should be treated in the same way. There are many people who do not have an irresponsible relationship to alcohol. We are not setting out to penalise them but we need to not be worried about the profits of the multibillion euro industry. We do have questions on minimum unit pricing and concerns as to whether it will actually have the impact the Government believes it might. There is some relationship between price and consumption, but it is not clear to me in terms of health issues, binge issues and other spin-off societal issues, such as mental health issues, that introducing minimum pricing will significantly impact on them.

Critically, there is potentially a danger, as is the case with other intoxicants, that when things are banned they are driven underground into the black market and the consequences can potentially be worse. The evidence also shows that if people have a problem with alcohol, they will seek out the highest concentrations of alcohol where they can get them, and if they cannot get them by paying for them legally, they will get them elsewhere. I am not convinced, and obviously there are consequences for those who have a responsible relationship with alcohol, in terms of what alcohol products will be hit by the minimum pricing, particularly affecting people on lower incomes and the less well-off without necessarily having the health impacts the Government hopes for. We need to debate this issue more seriously.

If we want to address the problems associated with alcohol, what we need is a massive public education effort. Information about the health risks should be spread in schools, in communities and at every level. We need investment in some of the communities that are worst hit by the impacts of alcohol misuse, addiction and so on. That cultural shift, and investment in communities that are particularly badly hit by these things, are the most effective ways of dealing with the negative societal and health impacts of alcohol misuse.

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