FROM THE ARCHIVES:Political Correspondent Dick Walsh concluded a series on the role of drink in the country in 1978 with a look at the political influence of the drinks industry. -
JOE JOYCE
Drink, it’s popularly supposed, plays an important part in politics, if only because of the conspicuous consumption of some politicians. What is not so clear is the influence of politics on drink.
“Conspicuous consumption” is not just a roundabout way of suggesting that politicians get drunk in public. Some do, a few with spectacular results. Most don’t. Many don’t drink at all. The average is probably no worse for people in any other gregarious job – journalism, for example.
But you don’t have to be a hawk-eyed observer to notice that, whether he or she drinks or not, much of a politician’s business is conducted where drink is served. Clinics are held in pubs and hotels; and at the social functions a TD or senator is expected to attend, drinks are available as often as not.
The man with the case to plead or a problem to solve is as likely to meet his TD for a jar as he is to go to his home. It’s easier that way.
Publicans are usually reliable sources of information and can be induced to promote or test an opinion for the deputy who wants to know what his constituents think. “I’d put them in the same category as doctors or parish priests,” Mr Noel Davern of South Tipperary told me.
All of which is no more than you might expect from the social and economic patterns already suggested in this series. We have a powerful drinks industry, considerable dependence on alcohol and few enough comfortable meeting places.
The influence of politics on drink, however, is another matter. Less obvious, but nearly always effective, what is called the publicans’ lobby is one of the oldest, most firmly established and most extensive in the Oireachtas.
In the Parliamentary Directory produced by Ted Nealon and Frank Dunlop, nine of the 148 TDs in the present Dail come under the heading “publican” in the list of main occupations. But this is not the whole story: all told, 17 TDs have a direct or family interest in the drinks industry.
There are, by my count, eight in Fianna Fáil, seven in Fine Gael, one in Labour and an Independent.
What they have in common, as hoteliers, publicans, company directors or however else they may be described, is an interest in the sale of drink. By comparison with other groups, they are both numerous and influential . . .
Much of the activity of the lobby, however, is conducted almost surreptitiously – certainly hidden from public view – at meetings of the Parliamentary Parties of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Has it influenced Finance Ministers in their budgetary impositions? It may well have done; the only evidence is the low level of tax on drink in the Republic compared with other European States.
Would the lobby be prepared to accepts efforts by Mr George Colley [finance minister] or Mr Charles Haughey [health minister] to curb the consumption of alcohol, either by severe increases in tax or by restrictions on its promotion?