Aideen Hayden (Labour)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. One of the disadvantages of being far down the speakers list is that most people have cited the statistic I intended to cite.

I notice Senator Crown mentioned all the organs of the body with the exception of the liver and I was surprised he left it out given that it is probably one of the organs that suffers most from excess alcohol consumption. I also support Senator Imelda Henry in her remarks. We are well past the day when we all play cards around the fire while sipping cups of tea, and will not be going back to John Huston's "The Dead", where we would stand around the upright piano or reciting improving poetry or singing songs. Those days are gone and the reality is that Ireland historically has had a pub culture. One of the sad things is that in the recent two decades we have moved away from the positive aspects of that pub culture to the negative aspects of cynical below cost selling on the part of some supermarket outlets.

Much of this, however, is not due to the activities of supermarkets but of successive Governments milking the cash cow of excess duty on alcohol in pubs. This is not such a narrow issue. It is much broader and goes right to the fundamentals of Irish society. I note that young people in Ireland take a much more positive attitude to the prohibition of drinking and driving so I would not like the impression to go out that young people are sitting around under the hedges throwing back bottles of vodka and naggins of Jack Daniels. Education is an issue, not just of younger people but also of people of my generation and older who saw it as perfectly fit in the 1960s and 1970s to get into cars without thinking twice about driving down the road absolutely trolleyed.

Some of the research mentioned points to the complete change in our culture. As recently as 2003, 70% of drinking was done in pubs and clubs. That figure has fallen dramatically and while I am completely in favour of the motion, we must be clearer in our thinking about how we address the impact of what has happened in recent years. Aside from the fact that we know excess consumption of alcohol leads to significant health difficulties, it is a fact that excessive consumption of alcohol is related to depression. At present we are living through the worst period the country has seen since the 1950s, and I include the 1980s in that. I argue for a rebalancing. I am totally in favour of the motion but we must look at what we are doing. The term "social inclusion" is thrown around but the pubs of Ireland in the past were places where people could socialise and get involved in community activities. They were positive contributing factors in society. This is not just an issue in rural areas; there are vast tracts of urban areas where the residents might as well be living on the outskirts of rural areas for all the potential that exists to socialise and interact. We need to make it more affordable for people to socialise in rural pubs. There is also a need to consider the issues or rural and urban transport. We must take what was good about the past and what is negative with regard to the present and carry out a rebalancing exercise.