Sir, – Your report on proposals from the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health to introduce regulations on alcohol advertising, minimum pricing, and to bring an end to sponsorship of sporting events, and even banning the sale of alcohol in supermarkets, must rank as among the most ill-informed ideas the Dáil has ever been asked to consider (Home News, February 6th).
Why should law-abiding consumers be deprived of choice and competition? The reintroduction of restrictions on the sale of alcohol may well deliver consumers back into the arms of monopolies and more expensive alcohol again. It may even deliver those same consumers into purchasing their alcohol across the Border or across the Irish Sea.
From the perspective of an older person, I like to to be able to purchase my wine, bottle of stout or naggin of malt under the same roof and at the same time as I purchase my groceries. I do not want the added inconvenience and cost of going elsewhere to purchase my tipple. Also, my supermarket affords me a degree of anonymity that I would not have visiting a pub or off-licence.
Our legislators are among the highest-paid in the world, but these proposals from the Oireachtas are more Luddite than progressive. They display a paucity of imaginative and innovative thinking.
The implementation of these proposals would only benefit special interest groups, again. The solution to this problem lies in more vigilant parents and rigid enforcement of the law. Why should moderate drinkers, who make up the vast majority of consumers, be made suffer for the State’s failure to enforce the law? I do not subscribe to the notion that increasing prices and restricting availability will deter young people from securing alcohol. I would back the ingenuity of teenagers who wish to purchase alcohol over any Oireachtas committee set up to thwart them.
I would like to see an end to under-age drinking and the social ills which accompany this scourge, but it is wrong to scapegoat responsible supermarkets, sporting organisations and society for the behaviour of the loutish few. – Yours, etc,