Sir, – As a citizen with no connections to the alcohol industry, apart from purchasing its products, I found Prof Frank Murray's letter on alcohol consumption and its consequences interesting (September 16th).
He writes of Ireland’s harmful relationship with alcohol. I suggest that we consider some people’s harmful relationship with alcohol. He also talks of the pressure on the health system caused by alcohol consumption. Again, I suggest discussing the pressure caused by some people’s alcohol consumption.
As usual, the simple, thoughtless, politically risk-free solution is to put the price up for everybody to pay for the sins, so to speak, of the few.
As usual, those who take a responsible, measured approach to a particular product are forced to pay for the consequences of decisions made by the minority.
Perhaps some day the costs will be paid where they fall. Insurance companies regularly load customers based on their behaviour. If you keep crashing your car, you pay more. As State data-gathering becomes more intrusive by the day, perhaps those who continually inflict preventable injuries on themselves due to alcohol can be identified and invited to carry the costs that they have caused to themselves and others.
Otherwise the message is keep doing what you are doing, and somebody else will take responsibility for your actions, today, tomorrow and forever.
Perhaps we should focus on attempting to protect people from the consequence of the behaviour of problem drinkers, rather than the age-old, tiresome proposition of more, more and more taxes. We are sick of it. – Yours, etc,
ARTHUR HENRY,
Dundrum,
Dublin 16.
Sir, – Earlier this month the advocate general of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) issued an opinion against the devolved Scottish government’s plan to introduce a minimum unit price for alcohol. Yves Bot said it was “difficult to justify” minimum unit pricing, that it would “restrict trade within the EU and distort competition” and that it was “less consistent and effective than an increased taxation measure, and may even be discriminatory”.
How are we to explain Prof Murray’s continued optimism about the viability of our own Government’s plans to introduce the same measures here?
In the vast majority of cases the ECJ final judgment follows the opinion of the advocate general.
Commonality of law – a fundamental principle of the EU – ensures any attempt to enact minimum unit pricing in Ireland will meet a similar fate as the Scottish one.
It seems obvious to this reader that a policy as fundamentally unjust as minimum unit pricing – in essence an alcohol poll tax on all consumers regardless of intake, income or alcohol-influenced behaviour – never had a realistic prospect of becoming law.
Why should a responsible drinker who enjoys a few glasses of wine with Sunday lunch be prevented from acquiring a bottle of wine at a certain price from a vendor who can sell it at that price?
Time and again the neo-prohibitionists have tried – and failed –to answer this question.
Instead, they chant the “Ireland has a drink problem” mantra, when OECD figures show a decline in alcohol consumption of 20 per cent in 12 years, while the Irish enjoy a highest-ever life expectancy of 80 years.
Or we get complaints about hospital waiting lists and street crime, as if these problems are symptomatic of a failure to make the most expensive alcohol in the 28 EU states even more expensive.
Rather than lobbying for the collective punishment of the responsibly drinking majority, there should be a focus on developing new and more effective ways of reaching out to the minority of drinkers who abuse alcohol in the hope this might reduce the human suffering and societal damage caused by alcohol abuse. – Yours, etc,
PHILIP DONNELLY,
Clane,
Co Kildare.