Raising the bar

You live in hope that sense will prevail, but almost inevitably, when it comes to public policy in Ireland, the opposite is the case. The pattern is that we get a knee-jerk response to problems, so that we end up missing the point, and – as a result – getting it hopelessly wrong.

The new “tough measures on alcohol”, proposed in tandem by the Minister for Justice and the Minister for Health, are a case in point. It is an example of the nanny State at its worst, imagining that you can control people’s behaviour by imposing a fresh barrage of restrictions.

For a start, the bill fails entirely even to address some of the more stupid inconsistencies in our licensing laws. One of the new measures specifies that once the bar in a licensed premises is closed, the music has to stop. For clubs, where people frequently continue dancing after the bar has closed, this is potentially the death knell.

In fact, in Ireland, there is no proper system of licencing for clubs, which in effect function off an amalgam of provisions, including special exemptions, which are at the discretion of the District Court. This is a perversely messy, inconsistent and unsatisfactory arrangement, which in truth makes no sense. The Minister would have been well advised to address it, but he has taken the easy and ill-informed option of putting the entire clubbing industry in jeopardy. Great.

In Spain you can club until five in the morning. But Irish people are too silly and immature to be allowed that kind of freedom. That seems to be what the government have decided.

In effect, some of the proposed measures are an attack on young people. The stipulation, for example, that Under-21s will be required to carry “evidence of age” singles out a particular age group in a nasty and hostile way.

I know that it might be a source of dismay to a certain class of politician, but at 18 you are entitled to vote. You can join the army and learn how to shoot at people. You can engage in consenting sex, without fear of being arrested. Eighteen is widely accepted as an age at which people should be treated as adults. So why should someone of 19 or 20 be told that they – and not their 22 year-old friends – have to have proof of age to be able to enter a place where alcohol is served?

No wonder people under 21 are angry. It is nonsense. I do not believe that citizens should have to carry identity cards – but if we want to move in the direction of a gestapo culture, the correct decision would be to introduce ID cards for all, rather than discriminating against a specific age group.

Besides, it seems to me like the kind of wooly provision that will land people in all sorts of ludicrous tangles. I am 22. I go to the local bar and order a drink. I am challenged by the barman to show proof of age. I say I don’t have to, I’m 22. The barman – for fear that I am a reporter from the Evening Herald, or some other newspaper, researching a story on the fact that pubs are serving Under-21s who don’t have evidence of age – insists that I have to. I say I don’t. He refuses to serve me.

I am 22 and I am being refused a drink on entirely invalid grounds. I have been publicly humiliated. And as a result, I may have the basis for an anti-discrimination case against the barman and the pub. The absurdity of it is obvious. But clearly the Minister, and the Government, felt that it was too fraught politically to go the whole hog with identity cards and opted for discrimination instead – of a kind that dumps both publicans and young people with a ludicrously thorny problem.

Then there is the provision that under-18s cannot remain on a licensed premises after 8pm. Not a major issue, at first glance – sure, what would they want to be doing hanging around in bars when all they can drink is coke anyway? But there are considerations here too that have clearly not been thought through.

The first relates to the role of the bar in smaller towns and villages around Ireland, and, by the way, its part in the passing-on of folk and traditional music. In many small towns, the pub is the only place where there is any kind of social gathering. “Teenage drinking” is not an issue. Children being with their parents, and playing an integrated part in the life of the village or the community, is.

How much better is it that they will have to bugger off now to hang around outside the local chipper? Or are we to have one law for the city and another for rural Ireland?

In relation to music, most traditional sessions take place in pubs and bars. This is the place where the promising youngster often gets to trade licks with the greats and to pick up on the nuances of the tradition for the first time. There are groups who have made a huge contribution to Irish music who learned their craft playing in bars as youngsters and as teenagers. To close down this connection between youth and age, especially in a context like that of music, may result in the loss of things that are of crucial importance in Irish culture. But, if so, by the time we know it for sure, it’ll be too late to go back…

In any event, the whole thrust of this particular provision fails to recognise the resourcefulness of teenagers who actually want a drink. They may end up consuming rotgut by the side of a railway track now, but there is very little reason to believe that the effect of these provisions – any of them – will be to curtail teenage drinking in any way. The fact that the policy of prohibition has failed miserably in relation to heroin – which is completely illegal – says it all about the rickety foundations of that assumption.

All the evidence is that if teenagers want a prohibited substance –or a drink – they’ll get it. Look how many kids are addicted to heroin in Dublin, from the ages of twelve upwards. The most likely effect of the “tough measures” is that they will create a new underground culture of drinking, and maybe in the process push a whole new slew of kids into other forms of substance use and abuse.

The proposed ban on advertising before 10pm, and other similar measures advanced by the Minister for Health, are also a minefield. Does he intend to ensure that UK channels available in Ireland will also have to observe the “watershed”? Because if not then the net effect will be that advertising revenue will migrate to UTV, Sky, Channel 4 and others.
That’s just the most obvious flaw in this aspect of a package, which, in almost every respect, is thoroughly retrograde. In the end what it comes down to is an admission of failure. It is the job of those in positions of power and influence to educate, to inform, to make space for alternative attractions, and to create a culture in which health, happiness and the intelligent use of what is fundamentally a beneficial resource become the priority for the majority, irrespective of age.

To imagine that you can get the desired effect by screwing people down is a cop-out. It is increasingly the way in which Irish culture is developing, turning this into a nasty and unpleasant place to be. And the bottom line in relation to drink is that it almost certainly will not work.

That’s progress for you.