Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

On Sunday mornings I see them pulling a veil over their wine display because of some stupid law that Minister McDowell brought in donkey's years ago or did not demand. I do not believe that is a social evil or such a display is normalising alcohol. The point was made earlier that 8% of alcohol in Ireland is sold through smaller shops and we are, therefore, dealing with a tiny fraction of alcohol sales in our community. I want to emphasise that, whatever we do, we must realise we are dealing with a tiny fraction of total alcohol sales. Anybody who has a grand plan to change Irish society or the culture in Ireland which would result in the effect being felt most in local Centras, for example, all around the country, which are not a multinational, where 8% of our alcohol is sold, is deluding himself or herself that they are engendering any significant change in Ireland. They are deluding themselves that this is where the problem is to be found. I want to emphasise that strong belief.

In such shops, spirits are behind the counter for the same reason that batteries and razors are, which is that they can be lifted with the greatest of ease. Blades for a disposable or non-disposable razor cost €5 or €10 a packet and are the size of a box of matches. They are behind the counter not to promote impulse buying but to control access to them. To legislate that alcohol in a smallish enterprise should be in a place not readily visible to staff unless one staffs the interior of the premises will lead to significant shoplifting. Anybody who has such a cut-off structure will find a bottle of whiskey or a couple of naggins of drink or whatever gone in pretty rapid order and their profit for that morning will very easily disappear into smoke.I am just making the point that we have to be practical about what we are doing. If one cannot see the alcohol on the shelves in these boxes or rooms, there will have to be produce there to ensure that they are not going into the shopping bags and overcoat pockets. Remember that is what we are talking about.

I believe that the responsible retailers have come up with reasonable ideas and I believe that there are ways to deal with the control of alcohol. The crucial thing is to stop it being sold to youngsters and to stop cheap, almost below cost, slabs of alcohol being sold. The crucial thing too is to have a regime in shops which is manageable by those shopkeepers. If that is not done, if something unreasonable is imposed, let us be clear about what will happen. It costs shopkeepers €500 a year to have the drink licence. They will lose it to the Topazs down the road which will have the capital to do all these things. They will lose it to the Aldis and the Lidls which will be able to manage accordingly. What will happen is that people who want to buy a bottle of wine or a six pack and have a game of cards at home or whatever will find that it is more difficult to do it.

The idea of having this cabinet with a grey front on it and a danger alcohol within sign on it or whatever is ridiculous. Can one go up to a checkout and ask for the cabinet to be opened up so that one can see what is in there, and see what kind of red wine is in it? Are we serious about this? Is this a real scenario that we actually believe is going to happen? Unless alcohol is dealt with as some kind of poisonous drug that should be kept under lock and key and kept away in the same sense that we approach cigarettes, that is the kind of scenario that we are going for.

It is clear that I am against this section. I am glad that I have gotten that message across. I do want to say that we can have pragmatic agreements and the Minister can do whatever dealing he wants to do with smaller shopkeepers and other interests. I agree with Senator Kelleher that there are other interests at play here. However, I am against the whole idea that we can somehow achieve an effect in regard to alcohol which is to de-normalise it and to marginalise it in our society which in turn will have a huge effect on social behaviour, consumption, availability and the like. I do not agree with it. I heard what Senator Reilly said about the effects of alcohol. I believe every word he says about the effect on the oesophagus and every other organ in the body. I heard all of that and I heard all of what was said about other effects.

However, I do not believe that we should set out as a society to marginalise alcohol in the same way that we are attempting to do in regard to tobacco. That is a mistake. It will not work and I do ask people to look back to America in the 1920s, a society that became convulsed with a hostility toward alcohol in the 1900s. It ended up worse off than ever after an attempt to ban it completely. Nobody is proposing that here. We have to go softly softly with alcohol, and not take steps which are too radical or unrealistic. I support a public health approach. I had to try and achieve it from a justice perspective before. I am glad that a Minister for Health is now taking an interest in the alcohol issue. However, I am strongly of the view that this section is going about it the wrong way. I do not believe that it is going to change things if one has those separate rooms in supermarkets. I think people will go into them if they want to, unless there is some kind of embarrassment factor involved in doing so. I do not believe that people impulsively buy all that much. In regard to all of these surveys run to see if people do or do not impulse buy, knowing the younger generation, in which I have been involved in parenting, if they want their slabs or if they want their drink or whatever they go for it. They will not be inhibited by the display arrangements in any shop.

Where I live in Ranelagh there is a Spar shop almost 40 yards away from my house, it has a smallish display of alcohol, wines and beer, and about 20 yards up from it is an excellent off-licence, which has won prizes as the best off-licence in Ireland on a number of occasions, and across the road from it is a SuperValu which has one aisle with two sides in it devoted to alcohol sales. I do not believe that any changes such as are in section 20 are going to significantly change the amount of alcohol that is sold in Ranelagh one way or the other. We would be far better off looking at the unit pricing and doing something serious about that. I come back to this point. The Minister said airily that the point was that alcohol was alcohol, in whatever form. That is true. However, our big issue is to stop undercost and low cost selling of alcohol to our younger generation. That is where it is most important. I do not accept the proposition that alcohol is located beside nappies for hard-pressed mothers who are going to impulse buy. I do not believe in any of that. I believe that this is a construct being dreamt up to try and persuade us of these things.

I believe absolutely in the unit pricing if it is done properly. However, this particular proposal is mistaken in principle. It will not work. It will probably concentrate alcohol sales in specialist stores and make life more difficult for those, such as small shopkeepers, who are trying to offer a general supply of goods to their community. It is mistaken in principle and it will do damage to them and do more damage to those parts of Ireland which are dependent on small shops to be the centre of the economic life of the community. If Rooskey, to which I referred earlier, did not have that Centra there would be nothing for 15 miles in any direction.