Drink proposals - Spineless and pathetic leadership

THE Government yesterday funked an opportunity to begin to confront the country’s drink crisis. What had been flagged as a decisive intervention has turned out to be yet another spineless, feeble, pathetic dodge.

The proposals — off-licences must close at 10, the gardaí can take drink from those they believe to be under 18 and a few minor details about positioning of drink in supermarkets — are cowardly and will make no difference to the toll drink exacts on our society.

They are another victory for behind-the-scenes lobbyists working for the big guns of the drinks industry.

The proposals are utterly disproportionate to the great damage being done to our society and represent another slap in the face for anyone working to confront alcohol abuse, especially those in our health services.

The proposals are doubly disappointing as they follow so close on the heels of this week’s report from the Health Service Executive on our increasingly dangerous relationship with drink.

The report, Alcohol Related Harm in Ireland, was — and there is no other way to say this — frightening. We all know the impact this abusive relationship is having on too many families and on too many individuals but here are a few, just a few, of the headline statistics established by the HSE.

Nearly half — 46% — of those who committed homicide were drunk at the time.

Between 1990 and 2006, 2,462 people died on our roads between 9pm and 4am, the period most associated with drink-related accidents.

An average of 28% of the visits to hospital accident and emergency units are alcohol related.

Alcohol-related hospital attendances increased by 92% between 1995 and 2002.

In each of 60 health and social indicators considered, drink radically changed statistics on death, murder, assault, brain damage, relationship breakdown and more or less every other facet of life in Ireland today.

Because we drink so much we’re less smart, less healthy, less attractive than we might be — even if we are just “moderate” drinkers.

We are not doing our jobs as well as we might, missing opportunities because hangovers have taken the edge off our abilities. IBEC estimates that absences from work caused by alcohol costs about €1.5bn every year.

More than 90% of young men who committed suicide in one region of the country had alcohol in their system and, according to GPs, 20% of patients who commit suicide, had a history of alcohol abuse.

Despite all of this we do not have effective plans to cut alcohol abuse or systems to comprehensively monitor the harm alcohol is causing. Neither do we have a watchdog to ensure that alcohol-related health initiatives are effective.

It would be easy to sustain this litany but we all know the reality: dysfunctional alcohol use is undermining too much of what is good and attractive about this country and the people who live in it.

And all the government is prepared to propose is closing the off-licences at 10pm, asking overstretched guards to take cheap booze from drunken children and a bit of fiddling with drink in supermarkets.

This Government confronted tobacco, which did not cause road carnage, murders, rapes or domestic violence, so when is it going to get real about drink?

What a disappointment, what cowardice, what a waste and what pathetic leadership.