Immoral to keep hitting the most vulnerable

COMMENT

THIS Government is treating us as if we were mushrooms. Keep us in the dark and feed us lashings of horse manure.
But we are not mushrooms. We are people and we are losing patience with the way we are being treated. They have bled us dry and they think they can take more from us. But for many of us there is nothing left to give.
Again this week we learned that they plan to hit old people or those coming up to retirement. Many of these people are not going to get the contributory old-age pension they were expecting after a life of working. They will be found not to have made sufficient PRSI contributions over their working lives. Some of them will find their pension expectations reduced by up to €1,500 a year.
Why is it that when the Government needs more money they must always hit the most vulnerable? Like the school bully, they will not go after those they are afraid of. The most powerful people in the land, those who caused all the economic trouble, will continue to live lifestyles the rest of us can only dream about. Why is the Government not able to stand up to them?
A lot of people thought that most of their troubles would be over once they got rid of Fianna Fáil. It did not take them too long to discover there was no difference between Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fáil. Even the Green Party, that some of us trusted, went along with Fianna Fáil in order to stay in power. Would you trust Sinn Féin or any of the Socialist parties? They are also in politics to get into power. I imagine they also would do anything to get into government and when they have it, hold onto it.
The latest crazy idea from government sources has come from Junior Minister Róisín Shortall, who thinks that drink prices are too low in our supermarkets. She argued during the week that one of the main reasons that Ireland has a drink problem is that people can buy alcohol cheaply in some supermarkets.
This week the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children has gone even further. They want a total ban on the sale of alcohol in supermarkets and garages.
Certainly we have a drink problem here and I have written about this previously on a number of occasions in this column but we had that problem long before the first supermarkets opened here. I agree with the minister and the Oireachtas Committee that something must be done to tackle the problem. It is the cause of most accidents on the road. It is the reason why emergency departments in our hospitals are unable to cope with the number of patients at the weekend. It is the main reason for absenteeism at work. It is the cause of most domestic violence and for marriage breakdown. It is why our jails are over-crowded and it is costing our economy thousands of millions of euro that are badly needed elsewhere.
We cannot enjoy sport without getting tanked up before and after a match. We must celebrate all happy events such as weddings and even first communions with alcohol and we need alcohol to drown our sorrows.
In our head-long rush to get pissed on every possible occasion, we are ahead of almost every other country in Europe.
Cheap alcohol is not the cause. If it were, then the whole of Europe would be plastered. Drink is far more expensive here than it is in most other countries. That’s why when Irish people bring their cars abroad on holidays they come home loaded up with cheap wine and beer. Most Irish people can no longer go out to the local for a few pints on a Saturday night. That is one of the main reasons why so many pubs have been forced to go out of business over the past three or four years.
It is much less expensive to go into the local supermarket and purchase a bottle of wine or a six-pack of beer and drink it at home. This is one of the few pleasures left to a lot of Irish people who have been bled dry because of so many new taxes, charges, levies and cutbacks. Is the Government about to clamp down on this too?
The minister and the committee should think twice about all this. The problem with alcoholism in Ireland is so serious that it cannot be tackled on an ad-hoc basis. The ministers most directly involved – justice, health, education – must get together with a team of experts and draw up a comprehensive plan to get to grips with this age-old problem. It is not going to be easy and it is going to take years to solve it. We all have ideas about it and these ideas should be pooled and the best ones implemented.
Drinking cheap supermarket booze at home might not be a great idea. But surely it is far better than spending the household budget in an expensive pub. Instead of targeting the poor and the elderly by putting a minimum price on the only kind of drink they can afford, perhaps the Government should concentrate on other ways of taking on the problem of alcohol consumption in Ireland.
Perhaps the Government might consider a ban on the promotion of sport by the drinks’ industry. Companies involved in the sale or distribution of alcohol are only interested in one thing and that is to get as many people as possible to drink their product.
Nobody wants a ban on the Heineken Cup, for example. But surely they could call it another name and we’d get used to that after a while. I don’t give a damn if they call it the Enda Kenny Cup, the Baldy Noonan Cup, the David Cameron Trophy or even the Nicolas Sarkozy Award. However, that might be going a step too far and might discourage people from playing rugby rather than getting them to drink less beer.
Another area they might concentrate on is the habit of forcing pints of Guinness down the throats of foreign dignitaries who come to visit us. I was not looking forward to the sight of Queen Elizabeth’s face as she was made throw a pint of the black stuff down the hatch. Thankfully, we were spared that abomination.
Why must they always concentrate on the poor, the sick and the elderly whenever they have a problem to solve? It is surely immoral, no matter what the economists may say, to pay over a billion euros to unsecured bondholders in Anglo-Irish Bank while the most vulnerable in society in Ireland have to go without.
Maybe they should stick to real mushrooms.