Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support the Public Health (Alcohol) Bill 2015, though I did have initial reservations regarding the structural segregation of alcohol, particularly where smaller retail outlets are concerned. That has been addressed following the pressure applied by the retail industry.

I support the Bill as a public health initiative. Though the Bill will not solve the cultural love affair that we have with alcohol, it will have a positive impact in changing our drinking culture, particularly among young people. That where our efforts must be addressed, because we are past intervention. We are not going to change the habits of older people who have grown used to drinking and made it a part of their culture. However, it may highlight the idea among parents that when they drink, they are setting an example for their children. That is an aspect of this issue that people have to deal with.

As Deputy Boyd Barrett said, we are going to have to do a lot more in the communities and I will outline one of the reasons. When I was younger, I played basketball and a lot of sports. The one thing young people all did afterwards was go for a drink. Prize-giving ceremonies, awards of medals and trophies etc., would all take place somewhere where there was drink. That still goes on among young men and women playing football, though probably not as much. It is not prevalent at the professional level but I refer to the community level. There will have to be an examination of alternatives that can be put in place for those communities. Where does one go after a football match? What activities does one participate in? Team sports are a great thing, because people make friends and bond with others. The bonds are made for life. I still have three good friends from my time playing sport. They live in Cork, Australia and elsewhere but we still keep in contact because of that sporting connection. That is a very important part of the community, particularly in working-class communities. That question is not really addressed here but it must be deeply examined. How do we fund a community to provide alternatives for younger people as to where to go afterwards and where to socialise?

I can only work from my own life experience. When I was 12 or 13 years old, my father did not have a very big drinks cabinet, as he could not afford it. This was the early 1970s. However, because of the culture around drink, the peer pressure that takes effect, my friends and I would go to the cabinet and take a bit of whiskey. We would put a bit of water into the bottle so my father would not notice. He would have noticed when half the bottle's contents were gone but he would not have noticed it initially. That is what my generation did when we were younger. The supermarkets did not have huge displays of alcohol. There were no off-licences in the early 1970s. However, drinking was still a part of the culture for young people growing up. Nowadays there is a huge amount of advertising and lots of drink is in kids' faces as they walk in the door of the shop. I think that segregation can play a role in mitigating that.

I am a public representative on the Canal Communities Local Drugs and Alcohol Task Force. I participated in many initiatives undertaken by the task force in the local community to try to highlight the issues around alcohol. We promote responsible drinking, encouraging people to enjoy it but not to depend on it. There has been a lot of debate about avoiding a nanny state that dictates what people can and cannot do. However, I think public policy can play a very positive role in explaining the health implications of alcohol. The task force must be given more direction on what to do in the alcohol aspect of its work. It must do more work and that effort should come from the task force itself, with help from the Department of Health. It must be funded for this, which is not the case at present. The task force does a lot of its work without additional resources, and this must be examined.

Three people a day die from alcohol-related illness and disease. We know the impact on families of a lot of alcohol in the family home and of having alcoholics in the home. I have a friend whose partner has a liver disease and is still drinking. He just has not got the ability to stop. It causes friction. The couple cannot go out socially and have one or two drinks as it always leads to more drink and chaos at the end of the night. This man collapses regularly and is constantly in and out of hospital. This is replicated all over the country. People like this are not isolated cases. They are in every street in Dublin, Cork and Kerry and so on.

We know that 1,500 hospital beds are tied up in treating people with alcohol-related problems, such as cancer, liver failure, stroke, accidents suffered at home or accidents that occur in the street when coming out of pubs and nightclubs. How many times have we seen people in an accident and emergency department after a drinking session leading to an accident? I have probably been there myself. The sobering thought one has afterwards is that one has taken up the valuable time of medics, health nurses and doctors because of drunkenness. It is madness.

Donal Buggy of the Irish Cancer Society reported that in Ireland in 2013, 12% of breast cancers were caused by alcohol. That equates to 353 a year. Every year there are 500 related cancer deaths. Liver disease has tripled within the 15 to 34 year old age group, particularly among men in their 20s. It is crazy. Those people put their lives at risk by drinking alcohol excessively. It must be excessive unless they already have a weakness in their liver.

Alcohol costs the health service €3.7 billion a year. The Road Safety Authority reports that 29% of fatal collisions involve drivers and motorcyclists who have consumed alcohol. Alcohol is a depressant and has contributed to 50% of all suicides. We have the fourth-highest rate of youth suicide in the EU. Alcohol is a killer.

If one considers the lobbying industry, I note the drinks industry lobbied Fianna Fáil Deputies to say the restrictions in this Bill were so strict that they would prevent the Christmas Guinness advertisements from being aired next year. That is true, but there is no harm in that. I remember that Guinness has used very professional advertisement agencies and sometimes created brilliant advertising. The one from the 1990 World Cup, featuring a man dancing to music around a barrel, always sticks with me. The advertisements are so good that the memory sticks with me 30 years later. That is how profoundly they can eat into one's psyche.

Producers, advertisers and sellers of alcohol want us to drink more and we as a nation need to drink less. That is why the lobbying industry puts so much money into lobbying Deputies, Senators, councillors, Ministers etc. in this Parliament. In an Alcohol Health Alliance opinion poll of members of the public, 92% of respondents agreed that alcohol consumption is too high; 78% were concerned about children's exposure to alcohol; 74% supported Government intervention to reduce alcohol consumption and protect people from alcohol-related harm; and 82% support Government action to curb alcohol marketing that appeals to young people.

Having said that, I will read a quotation from a journalist who recently published a piece on lobbying stating:

Drinks industry representatives extensively lobbied Government Ministers, TDs and Senators about controversial legislation to deal with Ireland's alcohol crisis, according to the latest figures from the lobbying register. It is estimated the drinks sector, led by Ibec's umbrella group the Alcohol Beverage Federation of Ireland ... had meetings with 14 Government Ministers and Ministers of State and 10 special advisers about the Public Health (Alcohol) Bill.

The director of Alcohol Beverage Federation of Ireland, ABFI, Ms Callan, lobbied six Cabinet Ministers, five Ministers of State, the Taoiseach's chief of staff, Brian Murphy, six special advisers, assistant secretaries in the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, 15 Deputies, 21 Senators, Fine Gael MEP Seán Kelly and three councillors. That was her role in lobbying. All lobbyists had to list their contacts for the final three months of 2017 by 20 January last. The State register obliges lobbyists to list who they had contact with but not whether it was a meeting, telephone call, email or other informal contact. Contacts also include lobbying five Senators and a Dublin city councillor by the ABFI's Jonathan McDade, while a former special adviser at the former Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Lorraine Hall, lobbied seven Senators, three special advisers and Deputy Joe Carey from Clare on behalf of ABFI. A former special adviser at the Department of Justice and Equality, William Lavelle, lobbied the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Flanagan, two Ministers of State and Deputies Colm Brophy and Tony McLoughlin for ABFI. The public relations firm Q4's director, former Fianna Fáil general secretary and Senator, Martin Macken, and Ms Hall of ABFI lobbied six Fianna Fáil Deputies, four Senators and Stephen Lynam, special adviser to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe.

In an interview with The Irish Times, Ms Callan said she wanted the drinks industry to be allowed into the policy-making tent. She said, "What's really unusual in this job is that, sometimes, people don't want to talk to you at all. But this is a booming sector, which supports over 200,000 jobs." Countering that, Alcohol Action Ireland said that IBEC and the ABFI had "never really been outside the tent". That is very true.

I support the Bill. This is an opportunity to see how lobbying works in this country from the point of view of big industries and big money. The alcohol industry wishes to sell more drink but, as a nation, we must drink less. That is what we must try to do.

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