Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his understanding and his willingness to engage. I do not think we are far away from agreement on the structural issues. I have listened to colleagues and I have thought about this at length. I come from a retail background. My family has run shops in County Clare for many generations. I am familiar with the absolute bureaucracy faced by retailers. They have to contend with environmental health inspectors and a myriad of different charges and rates. Ireland is probably one of the most bureaucratic and administration-heavy countries in Europe. It always seems to be the first country in Europe to implement the latest directives from Europe in areas like food safety and waste disposal. I know the Minister understands the challenges that exist.

I will not defend SuperValu, Eurospar or any of the big shops. All the multiples have an absolute responsibility to segregate and to do the right thing. I have a certain sympathy for the people in Roosky who were mentioned by Senator McDowell. In many cases, such people are getting no more than a salary out of their business. They are certainly not making a major profit. They are providing a very important service to rural Ireland. In many ways, it is probably the new rural corporate responsibility. That is all very well, but the bottom line is that the principle of this Bill is to deal with a scourge that has affected this country for generations. Alcohol is poisoning thousands of our people on a daily basis. Alcohol addiction is an extremely worrying scenario in our society. It is not new, but unfortunately it is deadly. It is shocking to walk into a supermarket and see pop-up stands everywhere selling alcohol at special rates. When I was in a supermarket approximately six months ago, I noted that wine or another form of alcohol was on special offer adjacent to each of the tills. There were signs saying things like "wine of the month" and "special offer of the month". The Minister is right to eliminate that.

In 2003, before I entered politics, I watched the campaign that certain sectors ran against the then Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Micheál Martin when, to his credit, he was introducing the smoking ban, which was a public health milestone in this country. I remember the abuse he got at the time. One of the representatives of publicans argued on television that publicans were running the country, on the basis that political parties held their meetings in their establishments. The attitude of the publicans was that they would deal with the proposed smoking ban by facing it down and beating the Government, but they were wrong. Fourteen years on, would anyone in our society contemplate any suggestion that smoking in pubs should be reintroduced? Such a person would be laughed out the door. In 2003, many people campaigned to retain smoking in pubs. Senators and members of the Government have to show leadership sometimes. The Minister is showing leadership with this legislation.

I believe minimum pricing is a no-brainer. I am glad I have not heard anybody objecting to it. At one stage, the pitch that the lobbyists were making to us with regard to advertising was based on the Guinness Christmas advertisement. I said frankly at the time that I did not care less about the Guinness Christmas advertisement. They have three or four years to pay people to come up with another creative advertisement to capture the imagination of the public.I would go so far as to say that Guinness has destroyed the lives of thousands of people at Christmas time and it has some nerve to try to use that advertisement to try to block the Minister from curtailing advertising. When I saw the proposed revised Guinness advertisement I was absolutely convinced that what the Minister was doing was right.

I will conclude because I am conscious that it is late. I was tied up in my office for some of the day and I watched the debate from there. I have been following it even though I was not in the Chamber. I commend the Minister, his officials and his support staff, and our colleagues who have campaigned tirelessly on the issue. I refer to Senator Black and others. This is groundbreaking legislation. While it needs to be tweaked to reflect the livelihoods of our small retailers, I know the Minister will do that. I appeal to the retailers to be reasonable because I would not consider some of the emails I got from RGDATA and others to be reasonable. Everyone needs to step up the plate and take their responsibility seriously. The Minister will engage but he needs a realistic genuine engagement from the retail sector.