Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I welcome the Minister. I am glad he has introduced the Bill. Members have taken the opportunity to philosophise on the issue of alcohol. One aspect which distinguishes politics on this issue is that some of those in politics who have been most constructive are those who could not be accused of being puritans in regard to alcohol or anything else. Whatever about my views on the Minister's politics, he is not a puritan. He has many other traits about which I am not positive but he is probably closer to a bon viveur than a puritan.

We must address the fact that there has been a spectacular increase in the per capita consumption of alcohol in this country in a terrifyingly short period of time. Some of this has to do with the changing habits of older people who used to be Pioneers but now drink a few glasses of wine with a meal. However, if one considers the distribution of alcohol consumption, I am certain the intensity in terms of consumption increases, the lower the age group. Some of the content of alcohol use surveys is typical youthful bravado. If one asked a 16 year old how many sexual partners he had, the number he suggested would probably be physically impossible. However, there is no doubt a frightening culture of mindless drinking has taken over among some sections of the young.

It is worth considering whether this is the cause of a problem or the symptom of a deeper problem. I always regarded myself as on the liberal wing of parenting. Although all of my children are now over 18, I learned early that I had to be sceptical about certain matters, in particular that I had to be sure I knew where my children were as distinct from thinking I knew. If one begins this process when children are young, by the time they are 16, despite the occasional stand-up row, a culture has been inculcated, though perhaps grudgingly and reluctantly. Then follows that awful period when children are aged 16 to 18. For example, when asked what time they are coming home, they reply 1.30 a.m. and one tells them that one will collect them. For a couple of years one hauls oneself out of the house at 1.30 a.m. pretending it is because they might not be able to get a taxi, pretending it is because one wants to be an indulgent parent letting them stay out, but knowing full well that the consequence of picking them up is that they know one will see the condition they are in, know where they have been and collect them from somewhere approximating to where they said they would be. There is no route around that. Giving them €20 and telling them to get a taxi home is probably an easier option and most of us in this House could easily have afforded that. However, it is not the way to steer people through.

Neither can one write a law to make that happen. Parents' groups in particular get worked up about what the political system is or is not doing about under-age drinking. Perhaps they should take a look at themselves.

We need to be wary because since alcohol was invented, 50 year olds have thought 40 year olds drink far too much, 40 year olds have thought 30 year olds drink far too much and so on. At the same time the objective evidence cannot be denied. In my student days and, I suspect, in the Minister's student days we drank as much as we could afford, but we could not afford much. One of the manifestations of youth culture that has changed is that most young people work during summer and sometimes during school or college time. Some of the money they earn is to support themselves but some of it goes to support a lifestyle that would have been unimaginable in the past. This is not a case of older, venerable people, or whatever people want to call us, bemoaning something. It is simply a fact of life that we must address. There is no way things will return to the way they used to be.

Some of what is said about young people reflects a certain jealousy on the part of an older generation of the perceived hedonistic lifestyle that is now available to young people which was, perhaps, denied to them when they were young. We need to be very careful about that. I have the good fortune to teach young people. I work in a place that is populated by about 10,000 people aged between 17 and 23 years, consisting of 6,500 full-time students and a good number of part-timers. They work in a crowded environment with one overcrowded shop, one overcrowded canteen area and soon, I suspect, one overcrowded bar. They are fantastic people. There is no enforced security. Gardaí are rarely on the premises. They are not needed. I keep wondering how this impulse to mindless self destruction and mindless violence emerges because from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m. it is not seen. However, it seems to emerge when the same young people, or perhaps different ones, go out somewhere else. However, approximately 50% of the age cohort between 18 and 24 is now in third level education, so the violence cannot all be elsewhere.

There is a question of culture, attitude and values and of how one behaves under certain circumstances. My experience is that young people, as I see them in third level education, are fantastic. They are better behaved in their attitude to academic staff than I and my classmates were 30 years ago. There is a less rigid authority structure, but there is a much better sense of involvement and engagement between staff and students than there would have been 30 years ago. The degree of willingness to act up and make trouble for an academic staff member is far less than it would have been 30 years ago. We must take that into account instead of flagellating young people.

The Minister is wrestling with this and has come up with some ideas with which my party does not agree. However, his ideas about café society and café bars are very good. When I was in Italy last year unfortunately in some cases I was in areas where there were many tourists. I noticed the bars stopped bar service at approximately 9 p.m. and resorted to table service only. If all our superpubs had to resort to table service at 10 p.m, instead of crowds of people waving €20 notes at the barmen behind the bar, a different culture would evolve. There could not be a huge rush because it would be constrained by the speed at which a reasonable level of service could be provided. The small café bars the Minister mentioned would be ideal places in which that type of culture could evolve.

It is extraordinary, given that we do not have a tradition of drinking either coffee or anything else outdoors, that we are developing a new attitude to our weather, based on the smoking ban, which will produce the most remarkable displays of people drinking and, perhaps, having coffee out of doors on cold November nights simply because it is the only place they can smoke a cigarette. However, in Cork the Garda has demanded that items of street furniture be removed by 9 p.m. because they might be used as weapons in the case of disorder. The city council demurred and the time was changed to 11 p.m. That seems to be a chicken and egg argument because if people are sitting and there is table service it would probably reduce the incidence of disorder, but I will leave that to the Garda.

I am glad the Minister introduced the Bill. I am still intrigued because all law is ambiguous. This week this Minister is in a very strong position to agree that all law is ambiguous. I do not want to pursue what I do not believe is a very serious issue, and which I would not want to make a political issue. However, all law is ambiguous because it is written down in language. The country's policing resources are always by definition over-stretched. The DPP's office is over-stretched. It takes a long time to get from a file being sent to the DPP to a decision to prosecute. In the middle of all these strained resources somebody somewhere decided this was an issue worthy of pursuit. There are issues on every bit of law from the possession of drugs to whatever one likes, where there is uncertainty or ambiguity and where what is written in what seems reasonable language is open to unreasonable interpretations. Perhaps when the archives are finally published somebody will explain — with a bit of luck I will be around to see it — why so much of the time of the Minister, the Department, the Attorney General, the Director of Public Prosecutions and senior members of the Garda Síochána——