THE new alcohol bill, seen as the first step in introducing a minimum price on alcohol, will help to promote responsible drinking, according to the chairman of the Clare Vintners Association.
Charles O’Meara said the organisation has been campaigning for the Public Health Alcohol Bill for a long time.
“I suppose Róisín Shorthall could see where we were going and, in fairness, Leo Varadkar seems to have brought it to this stage, which is fantastic,” he commented.
Mr O’Mara believes minimum pricing will be a very positive tool for promoting responsible drinking.
“In fairness, we’re making a living out of this as publicans but the whole social scene has changed. A dangerous precedent is being set over the last number of years. Alcohol is literally being sold cheaper than a bottle of water,” he conceded.
“We certainly weren’t getting a fair shot at what we’re doing. We’re trying to make a living but we’re trying to do it properly. We’ve no wish to see underage people inside in our premises being drunk. We’ve seen the problems it causes. People are literally selling drink to anybody at all who goes into the shop to them with very little supervision. There’s very little regulation in it, so it’s something that needed to be done,” he cautioned.
Mr O’Mara said any garda can walk into his premises or any other premises to deal with a drunken or underage person and they have no problem with the law being enforced in a fair way.
“We have young people coming into us and we’ve seen it over the years where they might have a bottle of vodka drank and if they’re seen falling from our premises, we’re literally to blame for that as well, so something had to be done at some stage.”
The proprietor of Next Door Off-licence in Ennis Ger Haugh, who is also a member of the National Off-Licence Association, said they had campaigned for minimum pricing legislation.
“Broadly speaking, we’d be in favour of those measures as well. We can’t compete with below-cost selling.”
Mr Haugh said if this bill stops below-cost selling, it would benefit his association and the public in general. “There should be a reasonable pricing put on alcohol per unit,” he said.
Mr Haugh believes if the minimum pricing bill puts the cost of alcohol at about €2 a can, it would make a “positive difference”.
“I was listening to a surgeon on the radio, who was a liver specialist in Dublin. It’s been proven in different places where it [minimum pricing] has been done that a year or two later, there have been health benefits that they’ve seen as a result of minimum pricing legislation,” he said.
“To level the playing field for the independent off-licence owner, who is usually someone local living in the area, as opposed to a multinational is important.
“At the moment, we can see that the multinationals have the lion’s share of the business because they use alcohol as a loss leader.”
Alcohol Action Ireland said the measures within the Bill are a very important and positive first step in the efforts to reduce alcohol harm and improve health, safety and well-being.
The group stated that the three key evidence-based areas required for changing a harmful drinking culture are alcohol pricing, marketing and availability and these are represented in the legislation, which it added is “very encouraging”.
By Trevor Quinn
A native of Ennis, Colin McGann has been editor of The Clare Champion since August 2020. Former editor of The Clare People, he is a journalism and communications graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology.