Good Friday shows up our ambivalent attitude to alcohol

A PROBLEM that will occupy the minds of a lot of people in this country today is not the state of the peace process in Northern Ireland, nor the future of Iraq.

What will be uppermost in their minds is where they might "get in". Getting in, in this case, means getting into a pub, because the day that's in it represents about the last challenge to savour a pint in the smug knowledge that it is forbidden.

A certain amount of research will have been done in seeking out an oasis that will be susceptible to a knock on the side door, but the day is fraught with uncertainty.

To hear of a pub where a bit of refurbishment will be going on is a good omen, because it means there will be a presence on the premises, and that is essential. Topers will put up with high-speed drills, and even kango hammers, in a pub today which they wouldn't normally tolerate.

But it's Good Friday, and the ambivalent attitude we have in this country towards drink is typified today.

The pubs are not legally entitled to open, but GAA, rugby and social clubs can open their doors quite legitimately for a few hours. Every other business premises in the country can open if they so wish, and practically all the major stores will do so. But you can't shouldn't have a drink in a pub. It's ludicrous.

Worse, it's hypocritical, but it sums up our attitude here to drink and nobody really intends to do anything realistic about it.

A points system should be brought in for politicians who pontificate about doing something about the drink, only the gardaí probably would refuse to work it.

This week Enda Kenny, the leader, and John Deasy, the spokesman on Justice, unveiled the Fine Gael Action Plan on Alcohol Abuse which would warrant the maximum number of points.

Their solution is simple: back to the future with a return to the old closing time of 11.30pm at the weekends.

That suggestion probably hit them faster than it would take to down a quart.

The thought struck them at some stage that raising the legal age from 18 years to 20 would actually be a real step in the right direction, but they dropped that one for obvious reasons. It wouldn't do much for attracting the younger vote to the party.

They would introduce zero blood alcohol levels for provisional drivers and that for fully licensed motorists would be practically halved. The latter point is practically inane because most people who have a car with them won't have any drink, and there are not too many of the "half a bitter" brigade in this country.

Minister for Justice Michael McDowell seems to be fixated with superpubs, and while I agree they're an abomination, they are not the only source of the drink abuse problem. He has plans for the introduction of legislation which will offer all kinds of measures to tackle the problem, but there is no sign of any of it yet.

In the meantime, public order offences linked to drink and drugs are going through the roof, yet the Public Order Bill is still travelling whatever convoluted route it's on since the year 2001 without any sign of it arriving on the statute books.

Insofar as drugs are concerned, the frustration of the gardaí in prosecuting dealers and then seeing them get relatively light sentences, if not escape prison altogether, is understandable. So, it was hardly surprising that the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors has strongly criticised the judiciary for not sending convicted drug dealers to jail.

On the final day of their conference in Galway, sergeants and inspectors had a cut at judges for underperforming and letting gardaí down. Maybe there should be another points system for underperforming judges. The slightly upper echelon of the force has now called for a mandatory three-month jail sentence to be imposed on people caught in possession of drugs. Anyone convicted of selling drugs, regardless of the amount, should be jailed for a minimum of six months, something I wouldn't disagree with.

At the moment, there is a 10-year sentence on the books for anyone convicted of having drugs valued at over 12,700, although the pattern of sentencing would appear to be shorter than that.

One judge the lads in blue would be delighted with is Judge Mary Devins. She has another solution to rid the area of drug dealers. At Swinford District Court this week she gave one of them Hobson's choice: go to jail for nine months, or go abroad. He said he would consider going to France, which, let's face it, is a better option than Mountjoy, so Her Worship adjourned the case until the middle of July so that the dealer could put his house up for sale and get his affairs in order, which was nice of her. I doubt, however, that the French will appreciate that we are exporting a convicted drug dealer to them.

Apart from disobliging judges, the gardaí are dogged by a lack of four-legged assistants. There are so few drug sniffing dogs in the line of duty, I mean that last weekend a dog handler had to be flown from Shannon to Dublin to collect a drug sniffer dog for a search. Whether the dealers waited for them to come back, I don't know.

Mounting frustration with the massive paperwork resulting from the points system caused the AGSI to back a motion suspending further implementation of the system.

The lack of sniffer dogs is symptomatic of the way things are organised by officialdom in this country, and the points system is another example.

A row has been raging all this week over the implementation of the scheme because the gardaí are inundated with paperwork as a result of the success of the measure.

And it has been very successful, because about 60 people are still walking around now because of the introduction of the points.

Mr McDowell, however, nearly went apoplectic when the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors threatened not to implement the widening of the penalty points system for drivers until a computer-based system is installed, which makes perfect sense.

As the gardaí are almost smothered by a mountain of paperwork, the only response the miffed Michael McDowell could make was to lay down the law about who deployed garda resources, which is himself and the Garda Commissioner.

Now, rank-and-file gardaí have joined the chorus from the slightly upper echelon and are in favour of suspending the expansion of penalty points until the scheme has been computerised.

Despite this resistance from the gardaí, the Minister for Transport, Séamus Brennan, has announced the extension of the penalty points system to include driving without insurance and not wearing a seatbelt.