Seanad debates
Wednesday, 18 June 2003
Intoxicating Liquor Bill 2003: Second Stage.
I wish to make a suggestion which does not apply to this Bill, but is relevant. Everybody who ends up being collected off the street by the Garda or an ambulance to be brought to a hospital to sober up should pay the entire economic cost of the process. It is an affront to have the health service pay for that in the case of people who can afford to get themselves blind drunk on a Saturday night. We should be prepared to discuss sequestering their salaries or their wages to pay the real costs they incur. I have got extremely drunk in my day but I never set out to get intoxicated. I am disturbed by the increasing tendency of a section of our young people to go out and get so drunk that the following day their boast is that they cannot remember what they did. How one can possibly enjoy oneself when the condition required to do so means one cannot remember what one did is a mystery to me. There is a cultural issue involved which goes beyond the law of the land and which we, as opinion formers and law makers in society, must address.
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