John O'Mahony (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach for his indulgence earlier and that of my colleagues. He is very welcome back. One's health is the most important thing in life. It is great to see the Cathaoirleach back in charge again.

I support Senators Craughwell and Humphreys regarding their comments on the FAI. I will not indulge myself in speaking about this because I wish to raise another issue. I requested the Minister to attend last week on two occasions because I had a fair idea of what was coming up on Friday. It is a mistake that the representatives of the FAI are not appearing before the committee tomorrow. We will discuss it at another stage.

I was scanning the Sunday newspapers at the weekend. I usually skip the full-page advertisements of the multinationals and so on but I could not help being struck by the fact that the price of alcohol, particularly spirits, seems to be lower this Christmas. Bottles of whiskey are available for €18 each, or two bottles for €35. Bottles of Baileys are available for €10. The Public Health (Alcohol) Act 2018 was passed over a year ago. The commencement of the section on minimum pricing was held up because we wanted to proceed along with Northern Ireland when its Administration was back. It is not back, however, so it does not look like there will be movement on legislation in Northern Ireland. Scotland was at the European Court of Justice at the time and it won its case. It is now revealed that alcohol sales in Scotland have dropped to the lowest ever level since minimum pricing was introduced in May 2018. Therefore, it does work. In fairness to the Minister, he indicated in the past six weeks or so that he was seeking approval from the Cabinet to sign off on the relevant section of the legislation. I am not asking the Minister to come to the House but I ask the Leader to seek an update. The Minister indicated his intention six weeks ago.I do not refer to responsible publicans or small off-licences but rather to the large multinationals that seem to sell alcohol as a loss leader.