The Minister for Justice suggested that the protest about the smoking ban in pubs might be "a lot of guff".
Mr McDowell made his remarks when challenged by the Labour spokeswoman on tourism, Ms Breeda Moynihan-Cronin, to relax the ban on persons under 18 being in pubs after 9 p.m.
He said the "guff" to which he objected referred to owners claiming they could not adapt their pubs to install a glazed partition for a special room adjacent to the bar in which children and their parents could eat.
"However, when smokers came lurking on the horizon, they claimed it would be very easy to subdivide premises to allow a smoking area. What was so difficult in the context of food became so easy in the context of smoke and I regard that as guff."
Ms Moynihan-Cronin said the Minister was supported by her party in targeting the abuse of alcohol by those under age. "However, a real issue will affect families on their summer holidays. I go to Dingle for the month of August and will do so this year. The area where I go has no hotel. As the Minister knows, throughout the Ring of Kerry, in west Cork and Galway, where people rent houses to take their children for three weeks or a month, the only place such families can have a meal is on licensed premises."
Mr McDowell said in the near future he would introduce a major Bill to consolidate the law relating to the sale of alcohol. In that context, he added, he would consider positively any measure which made common sense.
"However, common sense must be built into any proposal that might be introduced. While addressing a hotel in Dingle, we must also address a hotel in Temple Bar. While addressing a small hotel, we must also address a large hotel. While addressing a one-room pub, we must also address a super pub."
He would like to see a law allowing children to remain on licensed premises with their parents without creating the unacceptable problem of gardaí entering a hotel in Dublin to find 17-year-olds propped up against the bar with the excuse that their parents were elsewhere in the hotel.
"If somebody can propose a common sense solution, I would be the first to grab it."
