Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am also concerned about this. Political correctness has gone mad. I looked at this matter carefully and did not submit any amendments, unlike my colleagues. I considered it, and the longer the debate went on, and the more the different political groupings ebbed and flowed, changing their minds before the heavy hands of the health spokespersons, the more I wondered about the democracy of it all. This is certainly ridiculous. The apple festival was launched to celebrate the proud history of Bulmers cider in Clonmel, County Tipperary, last Saturday evening. That event will have to be labelled in the future if we dare mentioned cider. We have gone over the top. While there is a huge issue with alcohol abuse and misuse, we are going after the wrong people all the time.

There are off-sales everywhere now; in shops, forecourts of garages and massive off-licences. I have respect for the National Off-Licence Association, which runs its affairs properly. However, I have regularly seen the system being abused when youngsters are working behind the counter. We had to discontinue a festival in a town in Tipperary due to the way young people were able to get alcohol from big shops with other young people behind the counter who were peer pressured, leading to reckless trading. As Deputy Michael Healy-Rae said, the safest place to consume alcohol, tea, coffee, MiWadi, orange drinks or lemonade is in a respectable public house, where there are measures in place and where there are licences up behind the counters so that members of An Garda Síochána can come in and check it. Publicans have to keep their house in order, and 99% of them do that. However, we are literally closing those places down by virtue of this kind of ridiculous legislation.

Are we going to put labelling onto meat products, sweets or boxes of Milk Tray? If we leave out a bottle for Santa Claus will we have to put a warning on it to tell him that he cannot drink it because it might make him sick before he gets back to Lapland? This is crazy stuff. The legislation we are passing here is so regressive, so anti-work and anti-business it is frightening.

Deputy Kelly had a Bill earlier in the year which sought to allow small craft brewers - of which there are many in Tipperary - to let people taste their products and purchase some of it while visiting the breweries. I supported that Bill. However, the same day, the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, passed a Bill that would mean people would be punished if they even had a whiff of alcohol, if they even opened a bottle. This is farcical. We need joined-up thinking. Our industries and pubs have served us well throughout the centuries, and have to be supported rather than destroyed. We have gone over the top with regulation. We are going to become a nanny state, telling citizens that we cannot do this or that. There is an illicit and illegal trade already in place in this country, and if there is a hard border after Brexit, goodness knows what will happen. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle knows that better than anyone here.

We must have common sense at all times. I heard my former colleague and good friend, Professor John Crown, on the radio yesterday. He made the valid point that it is excessive drinking that causes damage to one's health, and we are not doing enough in schools and through the education system to educate people about that. If anyone here seriously thinks that putting labels on the neck of a bottle will change-----

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