Off-licences face tougher regulations

OFF-LICENCES may find it more difficult to renew their licences under plans being explored by the Government to limit underage and problem drinking.

Speaking yesterday, Minister of State for Primary Care in the Department of Health, Róisín Shortall, said her department was looking at “other ways” of addressing the issue of the easy availability of alcohol and the high density of off-licences, particularly in urban areas.

She also said she wanted to focus attention on parental attitudes to drinking, which were sometimes “irresponsible” and “ambivalent”, as well as minimum pricing and tougher enforcement of underage selling and distance selling of alcohol, such as phone and online ordering of alcohol.

Mechanisms already exist for allowing appeals to be made against the granting of off-sales licences but Ms Shortall said she wanted to give local communities, health authorities and gardaí the chance to object to the renewal of licences “if premises are not acting responsibly”.

The minister said: “We are not looking to close down businesses by any means but we are looking to ensure we have a regime which expects people to behave responsibly and people who are involved in running businesses and working in communities, they have to recognise that irresponsible serving on behalf of their staff is contributing to serious problems locally and we can’t allow that to continue.”

A steering group on substance misuse passed its report to the minister last Friday and she said its findings will now be brought before a cabinet sub-committee later this month and then published in the new year. Aspects of the report will be incorporated into the new National Substance Misuse Strategy that will run up to 2016.

However, Ms Shortall said she would not be meeting with the drinks lobby as they were part of the steering group established by the last government and that she was not sure she would have included them on that group if it had been down to her.

She said she had been “very influenced by the advice I have received from the Department of Health” and added that work was being carried out on minimum pricing. The minister said people who drink moderately will not be seriously affected, whereas young people drinking were “price sensitive” and that this needed to be tackled.

Ms Shortall also said she was keen to meet with parents’ groups to discuss parents’ influence on their children’s drinking.

On distance sales and “dial a can” services, the minister said she wanted to see active enforcement, with gardaí making it clear that the “law will kin” if it is found that alcohol was being provided to underage drinkers.