Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Labour Party and I support the Bill, but before our friends in the Gallery from the vintners association get too excited I wish to state on the record I am not a fan of it or what it does. Its influence over Irish politics is far too powerful, and its opposition to the injecting centre proposal is at best misguided and at worst miserable.

We have an obsession with alcohol in this country which is dysfunctional. It is the cause of a high percentage of domestic abuse, sexual assault and rape cases. Two people a week in Ireland die from fatal overdoses of alcohol. These are not people who get so drunk they fall in front of a car, these are people who drink so much that they die. It costs the HSE approximately €3 billion every year and if one goes to an average accident and emergency department any night of the week one realises why this is so.

I wince when I hear politicians speak about the pub being the centre or focal point of a community. If this is the case we have gone seriously wrong. I remind people the GAA, when it was established in 1884, was as much an institution to tackle the abuse of alcohol among young people as it was to re-engage people with the national sports.

I will put my cards on the table. I have a vested interest as I drink and I partake in a pint or two. However, I am also a republican and on this basis I inform the House that as someone who has been a public servant and paid from the public purse since March 2000, as a teacher, a principal of a school, a Deputy, a Minister of State and a Senator, in all that time I have started my working day with a Christian prayer. In every place I have worked, in my school, in the Dáil and now in the Seanad, as a public servant every single day my working day has begun with a Christian prayer. I am paid from the public purse now, as I was when I was a teacher. I absolutely believe in the separation of church and state. This is why I and my party support the contention that if people do not want to drink on Good Friday it is absolutely their religious right not to partake in alcohol on Good Friday.