What’s a café bar? Even Homer Simpson couldn’t answer that one

DID you ever hear anyone say: “Great night last night. Fourteen pints and I was locked out of my head?”

Alternatively, did you ever hear anyone say: “Great night. Spent the evening in a café bar, and had a glass of wine with my pizza?”

What is a café bar anyway? Anyone ever seen one, or been in one? Could you describe its unique features? Is it, for instance, a bar where you can get food? Surely it couldn’t be that - the country’s full of them already. Or maybe it’s a restaurant where you can get an alcoholic drink.

Well, hardly - I haven’t been in a restaurant in years where you couldn’t. Or maybe the introduction of café bars would have meant you could get a pint in McDonald’s - or a Big Mac in your local.

And if you can define the term café bar, could you explain the notion of ‘café society’ to me? Is it sitting outdoors with your coffee (and a little cognac, perhaps) admiring the fountains and the bougainvilleas? Because we could maybe do that three weeks a year in Ireland. Or is it sipping lattes and cappuccinos and talking about F Scott Fitzgerald and his unhappy wife? You’d imagine the novelty of that would soon wear off.

So what the hell have we been talking about for the last few weeks? It’s been a bit like living in a world created by some mad surreal novelist, where the Government is consumed by internal debate about a concept that doesn’t exist.

At the centre of this storm is the minister for justice, surrounded by real problems and telling us all that he has the cure for everything that ails us.

The cure is café bars, and when that doesn’t work, it’s called liberalisation of the licensing laws, so everyone can get a drink in a restaurant. There must be very odd restaurants where the minister lives.

There are two real problems associated with all this. The first is that the entire controversy was used to distract attention from the very real issues thrown up by the Morris Tribunal. But the other crucial issue is this. We have a growing problem of binge drinking in Ireland. It’s doing lethal damage to almost an entire generation of young people. The pretence that café bars might do something to alleviate this problem is about as cynical a piece of political chicanery as I’ve seen in years.

If café bars were part of the solution to this social epidemic, they would have appeared in the Government’s own report on the subject.

But you can search the report of the Strategic Task Force on Alcohol from top to bottom, and you won’t find any mention of café bars.

There is one reference to cafés, mind you. One of the recommendations of the task force was to “provide increased investment in the development of alcohol- free venues as part of community-wide initiatives. Provide seed capital for the development of viable alcohol/drug-free venues using existing structures/agencies ... Alcohol-free venues for music and entertainment are needed for the 12-15 age group and the 16-17 age group ... This could also take the form of incentives for venues (eg, cafés) to stay open later at night.”

In other words, the key point about the Government’s own task force is that they see cafés as alcohol-free venues. How this became transmogrified into a debate about café bars is a mystery.

And it is especially a mystery since it appears the Government has no intention of implementing any of the more difficult and controversial recommendations of the strategic task force.

Given that the task force operated against a background of some fairly grim facts and figures, that’s not just a mystery, it’s a scandal.

What facts and figures are we talking about? Here are just a few quotes from the report:

* Adults in Ireland (men and women) had the highest reported consumption per drinker and the highest level of binge drinking in comparison to adults in other European countries.

* Binge drinking is the norm among Irishmen; out of every 100 drinking occasions, 58 end up in binge drinking. Among women, 30 occasions out of 100 end up in binge drinking.

* Irish boys and girls aged 16 years are among the highest alcohol abusers in Europe in terms of binge drinking and drunkenness.

One in three were regular binge drinkers and one in four reported being drunk ten or more times in the last year.

At one level, of course, we don’t need facts and figures. There are too many horror stories, too much pain and suffering in families. And increasingly, it is becoming a fact of life for young people.

RECENTLY one cancer specialist said he wouldn’t be surprised if liver cancer, caused by alcohol, became one of the biggest killers in the new generation, and began taking people in their thirties.

That form of cancer is entirely preventable. So is the cancer of violence that alcohol abuse can cause, the cancer of abuse that is all too often associated with drink.

The strategic task force made a wide-ranging series of recommendations to begin to deal with these cancers. They are not all easy, and they’re not all cheap. But perhaps the most difficult are those that deal with the need to reduce the number of outlets where young people can get access to alcohol.

There are more than 16,000 outlets in Ireland licensed to sell alcohol. That’s an astonishing number when you think about it. It means that there is a licensed outlet for every 250 of us.

The strategic task force makes the point that regulating the availability of alcohol (minimum age, limiting number of outlets and time of sales) are among the most effective policy measures that influence alcohol consumption and related harm.

Several studies they refer to have shown that a reduction in the physical availability of alcohol, be it in the hours and days of sale, the number and type of alcohol outlets and restrictions on access to alcohol, is associated with reductions in both alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems.

It’s on that basis that they made their recommendations. Chief among them is the demand that government policy should be aimed at restricting any further increase in the physical availability of alcohol (number of outlets, times of sale).

That wasn’t a capricious recommendation. It was made on the basis of research, and it was made because we are in the middle of an epidemic that will have lasting implications for our entire community.

Instead of taking that central recommendation seriously, the Government decides that there is a better way to change the culture. We’re all going to be provided with opportunities to have wine with our pizzas. Instead of restricting the number of outlets, let’s have hundreds more.

And if the publicans don’t like that, let’s change the law anyway to give every restaurant the right to sell pints of beers and spirits as well as wine.

Homer Simpson couldn’t have come up with a better solution.