Dan Boyle (Green Party)

As a parent, my responsibility now has passed into the twilight as my daughter has reached the age of 18. Despite my concern the drink culture has managed to worsen. When my generation began to drink and to frequent public houses and nightclubs, the idea was to consume as much alcohol as possible, but to do so in a way that showed one could sustain such use of alcohol. A new generation has arisen in which the purpose of alcohol consumption is to maximise alcohol intake and to become intoxicated in the quickest possible time. This frightens me. Such alcohol abuse can be linked with poly-drug use, whereby many young people take drugs, which of themselves are not addictive and if taken in isolation, may not have a short-term medical consequence. However, when they mix them together in a cocktail of pill-popping, smoking and drinking, it indicates a generation that has threatened itself medically in a manner like no previous generation. There is an onus on Members as parliamentarians to introduce legislation that identifies such risks and tries to codify the law appropriately.

The imposition of time limits for the consumption of alcohol is almost self-defeating because part of the culture in Ireland is for large groups of people to go out at 9.30 p.m. or 10 p.m. to consume large amounts of alcohol before the official closing time. In view of the way our licensing hours are structured, a large number of people, who have consumed large amounts of alcohol in a short period of time, come out into urban centres — it is becoming an increasing phenomenon in rural areas — and cause untold social difficulties. What we need is a licensing system that would measure and regulate that more effectively so that people, first, would have a more mature attitude to alcohol and, second, would consume alcohol at different times.

We have just come out of a European treaty referendum, but in terms of our use of alcohol we are far from European. The norm in mainland Europe is to encourage young people to partake of alcohol with meals at an early age and to consume alcohol in small quantities at various times during the day. In Ireland, we have lost sight of that. We have bought into a cultural myth that we must binge on alcohol. While we might not be as bad as our near neighbours in that regard, we have basked in a cultural reflection of our use of alcohol. If we have any intent to assert ourselves as a nation that has more pride about ourselves, it is an element of our culture we need to lose quickly.

This Bill is born out of the need to construct such a debate and laws along those lines. A valuable job of work has been done by the alcohol advisory group whose recommendations have been discussed in this House in the past.

I accept that elements of the legislation could be drafted in a more effective way, and that is something we need to look at in the context of how we measure our business in this House. I also believe that it is important for the main thrust of the Bill that its contents are brought into being as quickly as possible because the summer period is the time of maximum consumption of alcohol and where many of the social difficulties come about from this culture.

That said, I am conscious of some of the concerns about what is being proposed in this Bill. I already stated that a strict time limit may not be the best way to proceed and perhaps future legislation would deal with the idea of rolling closing times between establishments in a given area or having them changed in a round robin fashion so that people drink in different establishments at different times and come out on to the public streets at different times.

While there are bigger issues being discussed in this debate on which several amendments are being tabled, I welcome the fact that changes to the licensing of early drinking houses has not been included in the legislation. They are an historical artifact from what were known as docker exemptions, mainly in the urban centres, but because to the changed nature of work they have become a social outlet for shift workers such as those working in health care. As long as we do not extend the number of outlets, I believe we should maintain the licences as they are.

There is an anomaly that results from that. As many early drinking houses were given such licences, they were also given six-day rather than seven-day licences. The 2000 Act allowed an opportunity for six-day licensees to become seven-day licensees by paying an appropriate fee to the Revenue Commissioners. That was time specific and only lasted 12 months after the enactment of the Act. I am lead to believe that there are no more than half a dozen such licences left in the country. It would be in order to restore that section of the 2000 Act into this Act for a further 12-month period allowing for an increase in the fee to the Revenue Commissioners to reflect inflation in the meantime. I am hopeful that the Minister will be open to that. Senator Mark Daly has asked me to indicate that we will be tabling an amendment in that regard. If we rid ourselves of the anomaly of six-day houses and if we limit the number of early houses, the Bill will be doing effective work.

As someone who has been known, but only on occasion because of my sleeping habits, to frequent places late in the evening,——