Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

It will have to be "any open bar or any part of licensed premises which is exclusively or mainly used for the sale and consumption of intoxicating liquor". One knows a bar when one sees one. Defining it is one thing but it is like an elephant, one knows it when one sees it. This is clear. The bar in a hotel or any licensed premises is not a place where youngsters can be found. I could have gone the whole way and brought forward a Bill which stated, "not portion of licensed premises" at which point I would have been in difficulty with hotels because an entire hotel is licensed. It remains an offence, for instance, to send beer up to a 14 year old in room 253 in a hotel but that is not what this is about.

This subsection is trying to ensure that when gardaí arrive in a large Dublin city centre hotel and see a young person in the bar, they can ask for his or her ID and if it turns out to be a 17 year old, they can prosecute the hotelier. Everybody knows what is meant by the bar of the hotel and what is not the bar but the lounge. In that instance gardaí can say the hotelier is running a premises in competition with Senator Bohan's members and allowing 16 and 17 year olds to be in the premises in circumstances where no publican could be allowed to do so. In such circumstances the hotelier is committing an offence. There is no reason large, well organised pubs – I am not talking about super-pubs – cannot establish function rooms and have parties and so on as long as the portion of their premises arranged for this purpose cannot be described in the District Court as the bar in the premises.