The description by the president of the Vintners' Federation of Ireland, Séamus O'Donoghue, of the law banning children from pubs after 9 p.m. as "a load of bureaucratic nonsense" (August 5th) brings our double-think on alcohol to new levels. To boost profits in the pub trade, proposals have now been made that children should be allowed remain in pubs until 11 p.m, writes Sinéad Shannon
Reports of Mr O'Donoghue's comments featured in newspapers on the same day as reports of nasty scenes caused by young people on a weekend drinking binge on one of the Aran Islands. The residents and other visitors to the peaceful island of Inis Oirr were "left terrorised" after young people arrived to spend a weekend of heavy drinking.
Ireland has a higher proportion of binge-drinkers among young people than any other EU country and the impact of these harmful drinking patterns can be seen from media reports every weekend. Everybody has the right to enjoy their leisure time but this kind of high risk drinking and the behaviour that stems from it is damaging and disrupting the quality of community and family life in Ireland. We have to accept that there is a link between this type of incident, which is not unusual, and the attitudes and behaviours towards alcohol that our young people see all around them. The facts are not new:
According to Eurostat earlier this year, 80 per cent of Irish men in the 25 to 34 age group are regular drinkers compared to the EU average of 36 per cent.
32 per cent of Irish 16-year-olds binge-drink more than 3 times per month (ESPAD 2001),
61 per cent of 18-24-year-olds engage in high risk drinking (SLAN survey 1999).
Young people's attitudes and drinking behaviours are shaped, to a large extent, by the society they live in. If this law is relaxed the children sitting in pubs until 11 p.m. will be absorbing a culture that tolerates and accepts drunkenness and makes alcohol a central feature of our social and cultural life. Those children then grow up to become teenagers and young people, and we know from the evidence that they tend to follow similar drinking patterns to adults (for Irish men 58 out of every 100 drinking sessions were binges according to the ECAS study in 2002).
The introduction of the ban on children in pubs after 9 p.m. may inconvenience some parents during a short period - their annual holiday - but it is surely an acceptable inconvenience in terms of the overall need to deal with harmful drinking patterns. We cannot seek to introduce measures dealing with the problem of young people and alcohol without accepting that change has to occur in the wider society too.
Children have a right to be protected from pressures to drink and from the harm done by alcohol. The law banning children from pubs seeks to do this. It is completely reasonable and according to a study carried out by Lansdowne Market Research in 2002, 89 per cent of those surveyed actually supported a ban on children in pubs after 7 p.m.
The Vintners' Federation are obviously speaking from a narrow commercial perspective and simply seeking to maintain their profits at any cost. They should look to other ways of increasing their profits rather than trying to keep children in their pubs after the watershed. The news that the Minister for Tourism is responding to their pressure and seeking a relaxation of the ban on children in pubs is really regrettable. Individual members of Government, though responsible for different policy areas, should still maintain a perspective that is guided by a public health perspective and resist all calls for a rowing back of this legislation.
It is very hard to believe that many families would base their choice of holiday destination on the basis of whether or not they can spend the night in the pub with their children. It is far more likely that other factors such as value for money or reliability of the weather would influence the choice to go elsewhere. Mr O'Donoghue should not be swayed by such weak and self-serving arguments.
Reducing the level of overall consumption and tackling the problem of harmful drinking is not impossible. A considerable amount of research has been done worldwide on the issue and we now have a clear idea of the kind of policies and measures that are effective. These include;
- Policies which restrict the availability of alcohol by limiting the hours/days of sale of alcohol
- Policies which limit the number of outlets selling alcohol
- Policies which increase the cost of alcohol through taxation.
The Alliance for Action on Alcohol supports the need for policies such as the ban on children in pubs after 9 p.m. and other policies that restrict the availability of alcohol. Policy changes can make a difference. If we want to reduce the harm on children and young people we, as a society, should try to change our own approach and accept that some restrictions, though they may prove inconvenient at times, are in the best interest of our children and young people.
Sinéad Shannon is the policy and communications officer for the Alliance for Action on Alcohol which campaigns about alcohol-related harm. While not anti-drink the group believes that alcohol and its high-risk use in Ireland are a public health issue requiring a range of policy measures.