Mary White (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That taboo has faded away, however. Alcohol marketing campaigns are now focused on women, particularly on young women to make them look sexy. Ms Costello said that younger women tend to drink spirits rather than beer, leading to them to drink more units of alcohol on average than men of the same age. That is very serious.

The other key point, and the bottom line at the meeting, was the association between alcohol and breast cancer, which is really not on the radar. Drinking one standard alcoholic drink a day is associated with a 9% increase in the risk of a woman developing breast cancer, while drinking three to six standard drinks per day increases the risk by 41%. There is a national emergency, so the message must be got out about how dangerous drinking is for women, particularly concerning breast cancer.