President McAleese's negative comments on Irish drinking habits have drawn a mixed reaction from participants at the Re-Imaging Ireland conference in the US with the writer Roddy Doyle finding "the sudden interest in Irish drinking habits hysterical". Ian Kilroy reports from Charlottesville.
At the conference in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Wednesday night the President described the Irish love of drinking as "a bad old habit that has never gone away" and she highlighted the dark side of a "stupid, wasteful abuse of alcohol" prevalent in Ireland.
Alcohol, she said, caused a "misery and malaise so utterly unnecessary that we need to re-imagine an Ireland grown intolerant of behaviour which it has too benignly overlooked for too long".
Musician and composer Micheál Ó Súilleabháin, who is attending the conference, said the President was "walking a very thin line between a truth and a stereotype . . . some people felt uncomfortable about that, although I didn't".
He said that drinking was not something peculiar to Irish people. He also argued that the Irish over-indulgence in alcohol "might be a post-colonial thing, the symptom of a people that had been beaten down, like the native Americans or the Aboriginals".
Founder of the Irish multi-racial paper Metro Éireann and native of Nigeria, Abel Ugba, disagreed with Mr Ó Súilleabháin, arguing that there was something different about the way people drink in Ireland.
"You don't see that kind of drinking in Nigeria," he said, "for us, drinking is something you do on special occasions; it's not a way of life".
Mr Ugba said that he found it difficult to get used to seeing people lying drunk and unconscious with drink on the streets of Ireland, "often middle class people," he said, "people with money".
Mr Ugba also drew attention to the role alcohol plays in racially motivated assaults, saying that in the vast majority of such attacks alcohol is an important factor.
Roddy Doyle, one of the many writers and artists attending the Virginia conference, said he was impressed with the President's speech.
But he rejected the suggestion that the licensing laws needed to be changed to counter the increased level of drinking among the Irish. "The idea of tightening the licensing laws just doesn't make any sense," he said.
David Irvine, of the Progressive Unionist Party, also rejected the idea of tighter controls, in both the licensing laws and in alcohol advertising.
"We're all big boys and big girls now," he said, "we have to be responsible for our own actions".
Mr Irvine added that alcohol had played a significant role in rioting and sectarian attacks in Northern Ireland over the years: "that and religion", he said.
"If the choice is whether you ban religion or ban alcohol I know which one I would chose," said Mr Irvine, before starting a discussion about where the best pubs were in Charlottesville.
The "Re-imagining Ireland" conference continues at Charlottesville, Virginia, until May 10th.