Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I welcome the Minister and the Bill. I have notes prepared but I will not stick to them. I fear we try to solve everything through legislation. There are many matters we should not attempt to resolve through legislation. I am not sure where to start, but let us take the example of prohibition in the United States. It was introduced there in 1919, clearly did not have the support of the population and was repealed in 1931 after much greater problems had been created than heretofore. I agree entirely with what has been said concerning small children in pubs late at night. However, perhaps we should not attempt to solve everything by legislation.

I will take one instance, for which I am partially responsible, when it was suggested in the House last year that something should be done about the dangers of salt in food, perhaps by taxing it. Since then I have thought it over and concluded that this would be the wrong approach. It is interesting to see what the Food Safety Authority of Ireland is now doing to try to convince, encourage and educate people in this regard and get them to think about it and even to shame them into not doing other things. One does not see many fur coats on the streets nowadays because people are somewhat shy and afraid of wearing them. This has nothing to do with legislation but with social pressure. Similarly, practices have changed in supermarkets, where plastic bags are not used to nearly the same extent. Whatever about the 15 cent tax, it is accepted that one is not acting in the best interests of society by using a plastic bag.

On the question of legislation, my wife and I were in Salt Lake City in Utah a short time ago where we joined friends for dinner and were asked what we wanted to drink. My wife said red wine and I said white and this presented an immediate problem. The legislation in Utah stipulates that there cannot be two bottles of wine on a table in a restaurant at the same time. I switched to red wine, as we all did, and we had the white afterwards. This, perhaps, is an example of trying to legislate for everything.

I know we talked in the House today about the nanny state. It is less a question of the nanny state that the danger of a police state which says, in effect, "We are going to legislate for everything." This is, perhaps, an example of where we have got to change attitudes and where people's behaviour patterns must alter. We must change the way they think. To draw on words used earlier, we must enthuse, encourage, educate and shame, so that people do not behave in a particular way. We opt too readily to try to resolve everything by legislation. In this case we thought we were doing the right thing. It was interesting to hear the Minister explain the difficulty he faced. The Minister, his adviser and the Attorney General were of one view on this aspect but the Director of Public Prosecutions had another. I am delighted the DPP is not a constituent of mine. Obviously, he is a Trinity College graduate and, therefore, I do not have to worry. I am not a lawyer and I hesitate to adjudicate between such legal luminaries as the Minister and the DPP.

If I had to choose, and I read the DPP's guidelines, I would side with the DPP on the point of law but who is legally right or wrong in this case is irrelevant because either way the prosecutions should not have taken place. While I give the DPP ten out of ten for law, I give him zero out of ten for common sense, a term that has been used already. We are back here debating the Bill because some common sense has to be introduced.

The DPP's guidelines state that the interest in seeing the wrongdoer convicted and punished is itself a public interest consideration. They go on to state that the more serious the offence and the stronger the evidence to support it, the less likely that some other factor will outweigh that interest. They state further that the first factor to consider in assessing where the public interest lies is the seriousness of the alleged offence and whether there are aggravating or mitigating factors.

It would appear those guidelines were not followed on this occasion. We are not dealing with a serious offence for which it is important the wrongdoer is punished. We are dealing with nothing more than a technical offence brought about by sloppy drafting on our part because "bar" was used in the legislation when perhaps it should not have been.

I mention this as a word of caution to us, as legislators. Let us not try to solve every problem by way of legislation. Speaking from a business point of view we market, advertise, promote and try to change attitudes. We do not have the right to instruct people what to do and we, as legislators, should consider that. I have no problem supporting the Minister in regard to this legislation. I regret it had to come back to this House because we slipped up when it was before the House previously.