Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is totally unfair that the Minister is not here and that he sent the Minister of State to answer on something he said to me in the Dáil last week for which there was no basis. I have sympathy for Deputy Byrne in her predicament as a Minister of State. I am shocked that the Minister did not, as was arranged by the reform committee at the beginning of this Dáil, come in here and put the Dáil before whatever other commitment he has this evening.

I raised the issue, as did my colleague, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, of bilingual signage or labels on alcohol products. There was a proposed amendment to achieve this. In reply, the Minister said:

Nonetheless, in addition to the practical concern I am conscious that we must in a public health Bill ensure that information on the label is clear and effective. It must be the paramount objective. A study was commissioned from Amárach Research in August 2015 to provide recommendations on how to best communicate critical information through labelling on the risk relating to alcohol consumption. There must be an evidence base to this and we must ensure this is an effective way of communicating. The research indicates that the inclusion of the information in another language on labels served to confuse the message being relayed.

In reply to a further point he made, he went on to say "it would still be less effective. I am in the business of evidence-based policies and evidence-based politics." It might surprise some people to know that my primary degree was in physics, chemistry and mathematics, fairly rigorous disciplines, and evidence is evidence. It is not hearsay and not throwaway remarks. I have the Amárach research, all 206 pages of it. I do not know whether the Minister read it. There are three references to focus groups on attitudes of individuals towards Irish labelling on tobacco. There are only three throwaway remarks. That is not evidence but people's view of a thing. There were people many centuries ago who believed the Earth was flat, and if one had a focus group at that time, one might have found that 80% believed the Earth was flat. The evidence that has come forward since is that they were wrong and their view was incorrect and that the Earth is more round than flat. A few people in a focus group expressing a throwaway remark is not evidence.

When one goes through this 206 page report, one will find that they never tried a bilingual label in the research they did. They never said to look at one then the other and got the reactions. At no stage did they actually analyse this question. When one looks at all the chapters and details, this issue was not one on which they did evidence-based research. Their conclusions are largely to the contrary. They cite the Canadian example as being one of best practice. As the Minister of State knows, everything federal in Canada has to be bilingual. The report tells us that bilingual is best and I am shocked that the Minister did not come in here to say sorry and that he made a flippant remark. What he said was serious. He was putting through a Bill and trying to persuade this side of the House that it would be dangerous to public health to have bilingual labels. He claimed to have evidence of this. It is clear now that he did not.

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