Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will try to be brief as I know many Senators wish to speak on this issue. I welcome the Minister of State to the House.

There are certain dangers inherent in this debate and we must be careful in our use of data. The Minister of State made reference to certain data but I drew the attention of the House to data last November which indicate that drink consumption is falling in Ireland, not rising. Our three friends trying to balance the books, namely, the Minister of Finance, Deputy Noonan, Minister of State, Deputy Hayes, and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, will confirm that to the Minister of State. I am sensing an air of panic around this issue.

By international standards, drink consumption in Ireland is actually low. It is lower than in several countries referred to here today. According to the The Economist index, we are not in the top 22 countries for beer drinking, while for wine, we consume 41% of that consumed in Switzerland, but I do not recall the Swiss being pilloried for being drunk and falling about the place. In terms of alcohol consumption as a whole, we consume 64% of the amount consumed in Germany, so there are quite prosperous and thriving countries which seem to cope with alcohol much better than we do.

The price of alcohol is not falling. All consumer prices have fallen in Ireland but the belief that the country is drowning in a sea of cheap drink is not backed up by the CSO, which is in charge of measuring such transactions. While there is evidence in Garda reports of drink-fuelled crime by adolescents, it is important to state that probably 99% of youngsters do not get involved in alcohol related crime.

The danger in what we are engaged in here is that some parts of the drinks industry will use it to increase their income through minimum pricing. It is fantastic, really. They are saying, "I would like to sell my product for X but I will persuade the Minister of State and his colleagues to set a minimum price of 2X". That happened before when, in 1903, a Liberal Party Government was convinced by publicans to limit the number of people who could sell alcohol on the basis that it would make the Irish more sober but all it did was make the publicans a lot richer. All that has happened in recent times is that by around 2003, approximately 100 years later, young people began to buy their drink in places other than public houses. The overall level of consumption is falling. I do not believe that we can say, "Person X was drunk but because he bought his alcohol in an expensive hotel or in a golf club bar, that is okay, so let's pick on the teenagers because they paid less for their drink."

I welcome the fact that drink consumption is falling in Ireland. If we need to intervene, it should be through increasing tax on alcohol and I am sure the three gentlemen I mentioned earlier would be delighted with that. We should not introduce minimum pricing. If we do that, we enrich the industry and that is not something with which I want to be associated. I wonder whether the publicising of a view of Ireland as a drunken country, when the figures internationally do not support that, is part of a campaign by some parts of the drinks industry, who do not like losing market share to others, to get the Department of Health to intervene on their behalf. That is the kind of contest in which one should not get involved.

We must check the data. If the Departments of Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform need the money, then let us increase the tax on alcohol in the budget. I urge the Minister of State to beware of some parts of the industry campaigning against other parts on the basis that those other parts are, in some mysterious way, serving seriously cheap drink that causes riots in the streets. If they were allowed, they would only serve expensive drink and keep the money themselves, enjoying an increase in profits brought about by a Government intervention which never started out with the intention of enriching the drinks trade. I do not share that objective either.