Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

In this Bill, it was my intention to afford a defence to a person who had in the past run an event, for example, a disco or an Irish dancing class, in premises containing a bar with closed shutters. In the Dáil, Deputies English and Costello claimed I was taking a very narrow view of the idea of closing a bar. They said that if I really wanted to encourage bar and club owners in future to hold large events such as discos for youngsters, by forbidding them from selling minerals over the bar or using the glasses, basins and cash registers from behind the bar, I would seriously inconvenience people who had no intention of exposing the youngsters in such places to alcohol.

Obviously two views on this matter exist. I was persuaded by their view that in future I should not act to inhibit somebody making use of the bar counter, basins, water supply, ice making machine, glasses and cash register in the context of an alcohol-free disco where the children would line up at the bar counter for something to drink. Sections 1(1) to 1(4) make it clear that no offence will be committed in future as long as the owner completely removes alcohol from that part of the premises and securely locks it away. However, I did not want to say that it would be a defence to show that the alcohol was locked away regarding offences that could have been committed before this Act was commenced because the police would not have been in a position going into such premises on the state of the law as it then was to grope around the counters to verify whether all the alcohol had been put away, etc.

A distinction is made between sections 1(1) to 1(4) and the defence offered in section 1(5) in that section 1(5) is supposed to include both past and future situations, whereas sections 1(1) to 1(4) are to be declaratory of what the law is from the passing of the Bill onwards with a view to encouraging people to provide the facilities to which Deputies English and Costello referred. Therefore, I am making that conscious distinction. It is true that the language of sections 1(1) to 1(4) is wider than the defence in section 1(5) and that is a matter of deliberate choice on my part in framing the Bill. I had said in public that if the bar were shuttered, a defence existed. I wanted to save people from further prosecution in those cases in respect of relying on what I had said was the advice available to me and from the Attorney General.

This proposal is now wider in sections 1(1) to 1(4). Effectively it states that the circumstance in section 1(1) that physical access to intoxicating liquor is securely prevented is to be sufficient in future. From now on if an owner clears out the drink from behind the bar, opens the shutters and uses the bar facilities only for the purpose of serving minerals——