No simple solution to 9pm ban on kids in pubs, says Ahern

THE furore caused by the 9pm ban on children in pubs is not easily resolved, the Taoiseach told Fianna Fail TDs and Senators yesterday.

Minister for Justice Michael McDowell is considering extending the 9pm ban to 10pm during the Summer months.

But the preservation of the ban was supported by the Government Chief Whip Mary Hanafin.

“As a former Minister for Children, I don’t see any place for children in pubs in the evening,” she said.

After meeting with publicans’ representatives yesterday, Mr Ahern told the Fianna Fail parliamentary party seminar in Inchydoney, Co Cork, that the Government had to see if a sensible compromise could be found.

Speaking after addressing his TDs and Senators, Mr Ahern said there was no leeway on the smoking ban but the Government was prepared to look at pragmatic resolutions to the 9pm ban.

Illustrating how setting a time for the start of the ban was problematic, Mr Ahern said that on holidays in the Skelligs Hotel last year, the manager told him of a Spanish family that would go to bed in the evening and get up to go to dinner at 10pm.

“We have to try and find a sensible approach to it. We are not in the business of trying to invite or entice teens into pubs. We have to be sensible and the laws have to be workable,” Mr Ahern said.

Minister McDowell said he had indicated consistently that he did not have an Ebeneezer Scrooge like attitude to people coming in off a beach and bringing their children to a pub. Nonetheless the Minister said the legislation had to be same across the country at all times of the year.

“There is nothing sacrosanct about 9pm,” he said.

While the 9pm time was not fixed, the law could not allow for a situation where under 18s could be drinking alcohol in a pub and saying their parents were on the premises.

En route to Inchydoney, the Taoiseach met with a delegation from the Vintners Federation of Ireland to discuss the 9pm and smoking bans as well as the forthcoming consolidation of liquor licensing laws, café bar licences and identity cards.