Ireland - Is there something rotten re the state and alcohol in Ireland?

By Michele Savage.

The Irish government has, for the second time, removed responsibility for addressing our alcohol problems away from the expertise of the Strategic Task Force on Alcohol, (STFA) which was instituted and appointed a number of years ago by a previous cabinet.

The recently established Government Alcohol Advisory Group, (GAAG), was convened by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, signaling a move away from the public health brief to examine three areas only:

· the increase in the number of supermarkets, convenience stores and petrol stations with off-premise licenses and the manner and conditions of sale of alcohol products in such outlets, including below unit-cost selling and special promotions

· the increasing number of special exemption orders permitting longer opening hours which are being obtained by licensed premises around the country

· the use, adequacy and effectiveness of existing sanctions and penalties, particularly those directed towards combating excessive and under-age alcohol consumption

As this would appear to be a comfortable situation for the Drinks Industry, it comes as no surprise that the chair of the new group, Gordon Holmes, also chairs the independent complaints committee of Mature Enjoyment of Alcohol in Society, (MEAS), which is the social responsibility front organisation of the drinks industry here in Ireland, and is funded by the industry accordingly.

It is of note that, in reply to a parliamentary question on January 30th this year, the Minister for Health & Children failed to state Mr. Holmes' connection with the industry, but she did declare the backgrounds of each of the other members of the GAAG.

Unfortunately, our government's appreciation of and will to address the seriousness of the situation of alcohol is reflected in the fact that neither the main alcohol concern advocacy group, Alcohol Action Ireland, nor the former national advisor on alcohol to the government are in this new group. This is all the more worrying because Ireland is still without the expertise of such an advisor, due to the government's failure to re-appoint Ms Hope.

Successive Irish governments have avoided treating the drug alcohol with the required levels of cohesion and gravity.

We are seeing an increasingly worrying policy of cherry-picking and delegation in a mish-mash fashion of the 92 recommendations made by the STFA. Some, and only some, of these recommendations were addressed somewhat when the government handed responsibility to its Working Group on Alcohol, which was part of our national social partnership body - a group immersed in industry. So much so that it was the Drinks Industry, not the government, who announced the prospective warning labels concerning alcohol and pregnancy, for example.

Even though Pat Carey, the Minister of State at the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, who has responsibility for the drugs brief in Ireland, declared last October that it is his wish that alcohol be treated as a drug, it is highly unlikely that the Strategic Task Force on Alcohol, which has been left redundant since September 2004, will be re-instituted at all, much less on the lines of our National Drugs Task Force, or our local Drugs Task Forces, or our board of Tobacco Control. This seems evident because our health minister stated, in another recent parliamentary question, that her department has no plans at present to create a board for alcohol similar to our Board of Tobacco Control.

The current and the previous Irish government, which strangely enough have a minister of health in common, have shown their hands by actively continuing to fragment responses to the alcohol problems in Ireland. This reflects the weight of the drinks industry in Ireland, when we consider that the political party to which our minister for health belongs has very close ties with industry.

Alcohol falls and is forced to fall between too many departmental stools in Ireland. It's time that we owned our problem and established an independent board to address alcohol issues for the greater common good, and not merely for the profit margins of the barons of the drinks industry who are slaves to profit-making, given that their primary responsibility is, unashamedly, to their shareholders.

Disclaimer: This editorial article does not express the views and/or opinions of Eurocare