FF footsoldiers spike the café bars - for our health’s sake, of course
It may well have been the sotto voce party line to scuttle Justice Minister Michael McDowell’s determination to bring the country’s publicans to heel, and the minister in the process. Fianna Fáil are very good at the Italian tactics.
Whatever, it came as a surprise to most people, and probably nobody was more surprised than themselves, that they did “exactly what it said on the tin”, to borrow an excellent advertising slogan.
They promised to stop the introduction of café bar licences and, apparently, they did.
In any case, Bertie is rumoured to have told McDowell to “pull it” or he would go to the country. Even before that, the ‘closed’ sign was as good as put up for all those café licences when the Taoiseach subtly pointed out that the plan was ‘not set in stone’, but was up for discussion and would come back to Cabinet for a final decision.
The extraordinary thing about this episode is not that Fianna Fáil backbenchers stopped McDowell on this issue, but that they actually DID something.
Normally, when one of their revolts is heralded it disintegrates into a charade once Bertie tells them to cop onto themselves, and the question of the first-time house buyer’s grant comes to mind.
Not that there have been too many threats of revolution from the foot Soldiers of Destiny, they being inclined to the comfort of obeying the diktats of headquarters, rather than ducking under the party line.
This time, though, 40 TDs and senators actually signed a parliamentary party proposal which would put manners on our Justice Minister.
Now it could be said, of course, that the backbenchers targeted a PD minister and that, technically, it could not be termed a revolt.
A revolt, according to Collins’ Concise Dictionary, is a rebellion or uprising against authority, and certainly dyed-in-the-wool Fianna Fáilers would not rebel against a faith that was handed down to Bertie Ahern, as some believe, via Moses. On the other hand, Collins goes on to suggest that to revolt is to feel, or cause to feel, revulsion, disgust or abhorrence, and that’s probably what the majority of Bertie’s zealots feel towards their dancing partners in the PDs.
Now it would be churlish to suggest that Fianna Fáil backbenchers were motivated by other than the nation’s health when they objected to the café bar licences.
The fact that a number of the parliamentary party are publicans, and that several others must be related to publicans, had nothing to do with the decision to take a principled stand against something that the Vintners Federation of Ireland was, coincidentally, vehemently opposed to.
Fianna Fáil’s John Moloney is chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Health and, despite his admitted vested interest in the licensed trade, has spearheaded the onslaught on the liberalisation of alcohol through Big Mac’s sedate café society.
Mr Moloney said that he opposed the proposed café licences, which would have cost a fraction of the price of a pub licence, because of the opinions of medical experts given to the health committee, and not because he is a publican.
It’s a fine thing when the greater good coincides with the common cause that publicans serve.
Not that the greater good made any impression on our justice minister when medical experts pointed out to him that his proposed changes in the liquor licensing laws would worsen the national alcohol problem.
In their submission to him, the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) said the proposed legislation would result in increased availability of alcohol, more A&E admissions, suicide cases, fatal road traffic accidents, and house fires.
Furthermore, the changes would go against the recommendations of the Government-appointed Strategic Task Force on Alcohol.
Altogether, it was a daunting argument from the country’s doctors, and it should have been enough to stop any move to liberalise alcohol.
In fact, the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Seán Power, endorsed the medical view when he told the Dáil that alcohol abuse was the biggest problem facing the Government and the country.
He said that everyone had been far too tolerant of the problem and the Department of Health was to set up a committee, which would include members of the drinks industry. THIS would help implement the recommendations outlined in the report compiled by the Strategic Task Force on Alcohol.
Extraordinarily enough, Mr McDowell, in the wake of the FF revolt, claimed that licensed restaurants were always his preferred way to proceed regarding the Intoxicating Liquor Bill.
It will come as a surprise to most people that, really, the idea to introduce café bars was that of the Commission on Liquor Licensing, and not his, and he said as much in the Dáil.
It may well have been mentioned by the commission, but it was the minister’s pet project until torpedoed by the Fianna Fáil motion, and it was he, not the commission, who had to make an embarrassing climbdown.
Instead of pressing ahead with his proposal to introduce café bars, he has now decided to deregulate and liberalise the restaurant business in relation to alcohol.
I suppose that was something else the Commission on Liquor Licensing came up with.
Prior to the closing down of the café bars, our Justice Minister was in characteristic mode during the cabinet meeting in Cork when he lectured the publicans of the dire consequences of resisting his café bar licences.
He threatened that they might lose the current arrangement whereby an existing licence had to be extinguished before a new one was granted.
Obviously, he didn’t realise they had more political clout than he, and the only thing to be extinguished was the café bar notion proposed by the minister - or was it the Commission on Liquor Licensing?
Either way it’s gone.
The café licence issue goes to prove that the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party should show a greater interest in politics in the future.
Take the question of garda discipline, for instance. Despite Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte raising it in the Dáil during leaders’ questions, Bertie Ahern declined to make any comment on whether he and McDowell had a serious row over the subject.
This apparently happened in the aftermath of the Morris report into the scary activities of the gardaí accused in the McBrearty affair, and obviously our Taoiseach wasn’t too worried about it as he didn’t bother his head referring to the rumoured row.
Maybe the parliamentary party should put down another motion about an ombudsman for the gardaí, which is something everybody wants.
But it’s probably a bit much to expect two motions in the same century from them.
