Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I totally oppose any cancer labelling of drink. There are traces of carcinogens in red meat and in smoked salmon. What is next? When one is buying bacon from the butcher, should he have to run out and put a sticker on it saying that one might get cancer if one eats it? The same point can be made in respect of smoked salmon. What are we going to do next? Are we going to eat at all? Are we going to drink? Are we going to be reading books instead? Maybe we would lose a whole lot of weight. I do not know. We are going down a very strange road.

A good few years ago, I put forward submissions to tackle underage drinking but nobody took any notice of them. Many people over the age of 18 buy alcohol in off-licences for people under the age of 18. I made a sensible proposal for tracing alcohol after it has been sold, from the person who bought it in the first instance to the person who ends up drinking it, but it was ignored. I think that is the road we should be travelling here, instead of doing the most sensational thing. Of course it will be grand. It will sell a few headlines. In the long term, it will not do much other than damage employment and damage this country abroad as well.

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