Thousands of people in Dublin last weekend had their enjoyment curtailed when they were dislodged from nightclubs an hour or more earlier than previously had been the case. Probably thousands more around the country had their enjoyment curtailed for similar reasons, writes Vincent Browne.
The vast majority of such people were not causing harm to anybody (expect perhaps to themselves) by remaining in late-night joints until the early hours. These thousands of people chose to enjoy themselves by going to nightclubs and staying late, and the State has no business in interfering with their choice of enjoyment, when no harm to anybody else ensues. (I am aware this reasoning applies to the possession and use of "recreational drugs" and, incidentally, I also believe the State has no business interfering here either.)
Now the argument will be made that harm to others does ensue from late-night drinking and it is precisely because of this factor that the State has intervened. Yeah.
I accept there are instances of disruption and violence late at night after nightclubs and late-night pubs close. I further accept that if the incidence of this were a threat to social stability the State has a right to, indeed should, intervene. But we are a very long way from that, and any intervention should be proportionate to the social disruption or harm caused.
But the incidences of disruption and violence are nowhere near the scale requiring or justifying interferences to the choice of thousands of people - mainly young but not exclusively so - of their entertainment. But more relevantly, there is a way whereby the State could contain such disruption and violence well short of the intervention in the lives of so many, and in a way likely to be far more effective than what is now instituted.
First, it seems to me implausible that the incidence of disruption and violence will be appreciably lessened by closing late-night pubs and nightclubs an hour earlier than previously. There still will be thousands of young people streaming on to the streets in varying states of drunkenness at the same time, and there still will be potential for violence. If the laws were changed permitting these pubs and nightclubs to stay open indefinitely, there would not be the massive disgorgement on to the streets at the same time, and less potential for disruption.
But there is another and far more significant point. We have gardaí, don't we? Some 12,000 of them. Would not a few hundred of them on the streets of Dublin late on Friday and Saturday nights deal with problems arising from late-night drunkenness? Ditto a hundred police on the streets of Cork, Limerick, Galway, and handfuls of police in other centres.
Say, 2,000 police in all around the country, working on Friday and Saturday nights. That is one in six of all gardaí on the streets. Maybe another one in six watching out for smuggled cigarettes, cannabis joints, feet up on the desks in Garda stations and whatever else they do.
The point I am making is we have a simple means of dealing with the "problem" of drunkenness at weekends: to get gardaí out on the streets to cope with it.
Instead there is the lazy, reflexive option: interfere with people's enjoyment, curtail their choice of entertainment, all because we cannot get our act together in managing our gardaí or gardaí can't get their act together in managing themselves.
How many decades now have we been hearing about engaging civilians to undertake clerical work in the police force?
It's simple really: civilians do all the logging, noting, recording, computing, even driving. The Garda Síochána "guard the peace".
But after all the years of promises, gardaí are still engaged in clerical work because that is what a great many of them want to do. Much easier than the traditional patrolling, must less demanding than guarding the peace.
Michael McDowell has been throwing shapes, indicating he will sort the Garda out on his watch as Minister for Justice. He has got through the inspectorate reform, which is progress, but a root-and-branch reform of the Garda?
There is good reason for thinking this is what is needed. Not just the Donegal capers which are being inquired into by the Morris tribunal, or the John Carthy fiasco being inquired into by the Barr tribunal, but much, much else.
Remember the Carrickmines module at the planning tribunal? Clear evidence of corruption presented to gardaí and not even elemental inquiries made by them.
Similarly, the inquiry into the Tom Gilmartin allegations of corruption. Just a cursory inquiry, then nothing.
Remember the disastrous investigation of the Veronica Guerin murder? The investigation, we were told, was the most extensive in the history of the State. And the outcome? Another fiasco.
On an individual basis, gardaí are often the salt of the earth; but, as a force, the Garda has atrophied and corrupted (corrupted, not in the venal sense but in the institutional sense of losing its way). The shapes being thrown over late-night pubbing and clubbing is a manifestation of this. Michael McDowell should have none of it. Neither should the rest of us.