The recent announcement by the Minister for Health, Leo Varadkar, of the proposed Public Health (Alcohol) Bill was greeted with near universal approval. From vintners and campaign groups to health professionals and charitable organisations, the measures outlined were widely praised.

The proposed measures include restrictions on advertising, marketing and sponsorship – and, more controversially, a provision in relation to minimum pricing, which is aimed at preventing the competitive below-cost selling that has been a feature of the Irish retail trade over the past decade, with supermarkets using cheap booze as a way of attracting customers.
The Bill is part of a wider effort to reduce Ireland’s consumption of alcohol. Although OECD figures indicate that there has been a 20% drop in per capita consumption over the past decade, Irish citizens still drink an average of 11.6 litres of alcohol per capita, which is 27% higher than the OECD average. According to the OECD figures, however, Ireland is still behind France – and only marginally ahead of Germany – in terms of average volume consumed.
Interestingly, the World Health Organisation also produces statistics – and these suggest that Ireland’s reputation as a major offender may be somewhat exaggerated. The WHO’s 2014 report (based on 2010 figures) put Ireland at joint 21st (alongside Luxembourg) in the global consumption charts, lagging way behind a host of eastern European countries, as well as France and Australia.
According to the WHO figures, consumption here is higher than Germany but by less than 1%. Among the countries that will out-drink Ireland in 2015, according to the organisation’s predictions, are the UK, New Zealand and South Africa. If these forecasts are correct, Ireland will drop to No.25 in the charts...

WRITTEN GUARANTEE
That there is a problem in Ireland with a culture of excessive drinking, among a stratum of problem drinkers, is not in dispute. Even representatives of the drinks industry openly acknowledge this: in the long run a culture where people get stupidly drunk is bad for business.
The question as to how this can best be addressed remains an open one. As one way of addressing the problem, the new bill proposes to establish a minimum cost at which alcohol can be sold in Ireland by applying what is called minimum unit pricing (or MUP). This is likely be pitched somewhere between 90c and €1.10 per 10 grams of alcohol – even at the lower amount, this would make it impossible to buy a can of regular strength lager for less than €1.80, or a bottle of wine for less than €7.20.
Among those to support the move is the newly-launched Stop Out-Of-Control Drinking campaign, which aims to publish a large-scale action plan by summer of this year, with a view to making excessive consumption of alcohol “an unacceptable part of Irish culture by 2021.”
The campaign is chaired by Fergus Finlay, who spoke to Hot Press at the launch of the initiative. Asked about the new government measures, he said that they were a step in the right direction.
“As far as the board is concerned, we absolutely support all the forms of regulation that have been proposed,” he said. “This includes minimum pricing, 100%. And if more regulation arrives, we’ll support that too.”
Many people may find it curious that the campaign is funded by the drinks industry giant, Diageo, who produce Guinness, among a portfolio of global alcohol brands. However, Hot Press has spoken to a number of people who work for the company and they were at pains to point out that Diageo would play no part whatsoever in the formulation or execution of the campaign.
For his part, Finlay stated that the group have received a written guarantee from Diageo that they will be allowed to act entirely independently.
Diageo Ireland chief David Smith insisted that the company’s involvement in the Stop Out-Of-Control Drinking campaign is a positive one. “There’s no doubt,” he said, “that there’s a deep-seated, cultural change required, one that will require everyone to engage. This campaign is designed to engage with individuals, communities, and societies at large, in an effort to make alcohol misuse something that people simply don’t want to do.”

CLEAR CONCERNS
In a curious twist, the Scotch Whisky Association – of which Diageo is an influential member – is currently involved in a European Court of Justice challenge to proposed minimum alcohol pricing legislation being introduced in Scotland.
The Chief Executive of the SWA, David Frost, is adamant that the minimum unit pricing policy is misconceived. If the initial uproar in response to the Minister’s proposals is anything to go by, there are many consumers in Ireland who would agree with him. Frost insists that the proposals are “a heavy-handed way of trying to encourage responsible drinkers to drink slightly more responsibly, while doing nothing to help heavy drinkers insensitive to price. Price fixing does not become good policy just because the motives are good: instead we should all focus on what has been actually proven to work.”
The Scottish proposal would introduce an MUP of 50p per unit of alcohol – though clearly this would not apply in the rest of the UK. The SWA argue that the legislation is illegal under European free-trade law. If their action is successful, it would likely also stymie Irish efforts to introduce a minimum price on alcohol.
Success for the SWA is far from being a foregone conclusion. Indeed Professor Niamh Nic Suibhne, Chair of EU Law at Edinburgh University, is not at all convinced that the SWA have a case. “There is a good chance that the challenge might fail at the first stage,” she told Hot Press, “by failing to show that this particular minimum pricing rule is likely to be discriminatory against producers of alcohol in other States. Also, the European Court of Justice may well take a lenient stance, since several Member States have clear concerns about alcohol and public health, and are intending to pass similar measures.”
For its part, the SWA points out that when Scotland notified the European Commission of the intended legislation, 10 countries – France, Germany, Italy and Spain among them – indicated their opposition to MUP.
The Department of Health in Ireland, under whose aegis the MUP legislation is being promoted, said that it will continue to monitor the developments at the European Court. However, a spokesperson also confirmed that Minister Varadkar intends to proceed with his efforts in the “ongoing discussion [over MUP provisions] with our colleagues in relevant Departments and with our counterparts in Northern Ireland.”

PROBLEM DRINKING
The stance taken by the authorities in Northern Ireland will be of great interest. The spectre of cars crossing the border and loading up on cheap booze in Newry has been raised by some of those opposed to Minimum Unit Pricing – though that has been rendered less likely by the recent drop in the value of the euro versus sterling. But if different regimes were to continue on either side of the border, the potential is always there that it might be good for business in the North.
How the Assembly will bounce on the issue is anyone’s guess. The UK shelved plans to introduce MUP in England and Wales, with the UK Home Office declaring that the available evidence does not “conclusively demonstrate MUP will actually do what it is meant to: reduce problem drinking without penalising all those who drink responsibly. In the absence of that empirical evidence, we have decided that it would be a mistake to implement MUP at this stage.” The Northern Ireland Assembly could, however, choose to follow the Scottish lead and introduce local provisions for an MUP regime.
Meanwhile, the campaign to Stop Out-Of-Control Drinking is determined to press ahead with its campaign, irrespective of what happens in the European courts.
“It’s a corrosive relationship that we have with alcohol in this country, and one which we often seek to glamorise,” Fergus Finlay says. “It won’t be easy to change – the amount of money spent on advertising and promoting alcohol is enormous – but I also think that it’s time for us to wake up.”