Madam, - This is a letter I was hoping I would not have to write but Liam Lawlor (December 28th) has provoked me into doing so. His solution to binge drinking is to raise the price of drink and raise the age limit. That is compulsion in a more extreme form than before advocated and will achieve nothing. I cannot help feeling that a complete reversal of this policy might be more effective.
If the price of drink were lowered, age limits abolished and beer made available at lunchtime in every secondary school in the country that might be more effective because it would remove the mystique attached to alcohol in Ireland. If people stopped writing to the paper about the problem of binge drinking that would help too. - Yours, etc.,
TOMÁS O BEIRNE, Ilex House, Sussex Road, Dublin 4.