John Gilroy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Alex White, to the Chamber. I will start by welcoming that he put into the arena here the figure that will give the lie to information that is always being quoted by those who are not in favour of reform around alcohol consumption in Ireland, that is, that ¤3.4 billion is the economic alcohol-related cost to the economy. When one says so, the argument is always that the Government raises more in taxes from selling alcohol than it costs the economy and there is somehow an implication that the Government is complicit in the promotion of alcohol as well. Our relationship with alcohol consumption is difficult and I do not think anyone here will disagree with that. Even though the aggregate amount of alcohol has been falling, and has fallen approximately 17% since 2001, drinking patterns have changed as well.

My chief concern relates to alcohol consumption and young people. It is easy for someone of my age to say that young people drink too much. Every generation laments and despairs for the generation coming immediately behind it. It seems that the current generation has developed a different consumption pattern but for a middle-aged man like me to stand up and start finger wagging at young people requires me to put up some information that will corroborate what I am saying.

Some 44% of those who drink alcohol in Ireland consume more than five drinks at any one time, which is classified as binge drinking. This dangerous intake level, especially among young people, is linked to severe long-term physical and psychological damage. It is not only physically hazardous and socially damaging, but is also the cause of much personal distress. We need to know that family, school and social obligations are social obligations are sometimes neglected and risk-taking behaviour increases as the decision-making process is diminished under the effects of alcohol. We have seen that in some of the figures the Minister of State quoted for public order crime, in self-harm and in suicide, and we also know that one death in four among young men is attributable to alcohol misuse. Those are the facts. We could list out any number of statistics to make the point but the one point we know is that alcohol misuse generally is damaging, and particularly so among young people.

The patterns of behaviour that are laid down when we are young tend to stay with us for the rest of our days and it need be no surprise for us to hear that age is significant when we talk about when people start drinking. The lifetime alcohol dependence rate for those who start drinking before the age of 14 is four times higher than that for those who do not start drinking until they are 20.

The challenge facing society is significant and needs to be approached in a strategic and multi-stranded manner. We need to take steps to have immediate impact on drinking patterns but we also need to keep a close eye on those initiatives which will do something that will work in the long term.

There is no immediate magic bullet. Minimum pricing has been shown to reduce alcohol consumption and sales, at least in other jurisdictions, and the abolition of alcohol advertising associated with sports events will make some difference, but we need to be conscious of the big-picture issues. Although politically expedient and, therefore, attractive to us as policy makers, they will not, on their own, change our unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

The report of the steering committee and its recommendations are very welcome but we must try to achieve a cultural change in our behaviour and this will not be done by finger wagging at young people. It will only be done by hard work and by people taking personal responsibility for their own drinking habits. We must stop normalising heavy drinking by using alcohol to celebrate, commiserate or commemorate at virtually every social occasion or event that comes our way. One thing that is particularly insidious and perplexingly foolish is the way that we celebrated "Arthur's Day" recently. It was a triumph of marketing over common sense, which enticed people to participate in a contrived celebration for the gullible. The insidiousness of this was portrayed by its promoters saying that it was only a bit of craic or a bit of harmless fun and indeed, for many people, that is what it was. However, the harmless fun was visible in the accident and emergency departments of our hospitals that night, to the gardaí, who were called to the scene of multiple public order offences on the streets and to business and home owners who had to sweep away the detritus the following morning. It was not harmless fun for a great number of people and the data provided earlier by the Minister of State concerning alcohol-related harm confirms that fact.

The visits of both President Obama and the Queen of England were hosted around the marketing of alcohol. We saw the President in a pub, holding up a pint and the Queen was brought to a well-known landmark in Dublin, closely associated with alcohol. As Senator van Turnhout pointed out, our cultural identity and reputation is closely bound up with the promotion of alcohol. We are confronted, of course, with a very powerful drinks industry in this country, which is forever dismissing those who raise concerns about the dangerous levels of drinking here as cranks or kill-joys. Representatives of the drinks industry appeared before the Joint Committee on Health and Children recently and put forward a most reasonable and benign case for the industry, which presented drinking in Ireland as fairly harmless. The representatives acknowledged that in a small number of cases, there were problems but argued that these problems primarily affected individuals and required interventions only at an individual level. The argument was plausible at first sight and was presented in a slick and professional manner and could lead to a certain level of forbearance in this area. There was no recognition at all by the drinks industry of the societal harm and the damage to the social fabric caused by heavy drinking. Nor was there a recognition of the fact that one person's drinking has effects outside the orbit of that individual or of the cost to society in economic and social terms.

We seem, as a society, to have lost our way in relation to drink but this is not a new phenomenon. Social commentators from pre-Famine times were preoccupied with the heavy level of drinking here and described Ireland as a society in despair. Of course, society cannot be the best judge of its own position on the historic continuum but I wonder, in the context of the consumption of 11.5 litres of alcohol per adult, whether at some time in the future today's society will be looked at as one that lost its way regarding alcohol and one that is in despair.

Drinks industry representatives tell us that alcohol advertising is not aimed at increasing alcohol sales and that the main aim is to capture market share from rival brands. However, I do not see advertisements with images of men sitting in a public park, slobbering over a bottle of wine. That is not the way alcohol is portrayed. It is portrayed as a product for cool young people in the company of other cool young people, having great fun and the message is very clear. Alcohol advertising targets young people.

I am glad the Minister for State is continuing the work of his predecessor on alcohol and his address to the House today was very good. I have worked in the mental health services for many years and have seen the harm that alcohol does. It is one of the most significant challenges facing our society and one that the Government must prioritise, without being paternalistic. An enormous level of personal responsibility is also required but the Government, and the Department of Health in particular, can devise the roadmap by which we can find our way in tackling the enormous challenge facing us. I look forward to supporting the initiatives of the Minister of State and congratulate him on them.