The unveiling this week of the proposed heads of the new Public Health (Alcohol) Bill marked the inauguration of a new phase of analysis and comment on Irish alcohol use and misuse.
Much was made of the novel identification by legislators of alcohol abuse as a public health issue as opposed to simply a licensing issue. Historically, this health dimension of the alcohol problem has been the preserve of public health reformers and moral crusaders who have been vocal in linking alcohol abuse to a variety of tragedies, including lost childhoods and mental and physical decline. Reports from the Dublin branch of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in the early 20th century, for example, identified excessive drinking as the chief cause of child neglect.
But there was such a variety of vested interests associated with the alcohol industry that cynicism existed about the extent to which politicians would be prepared to enact legislation or help foster a climate that would reduce consumption once political independence was achieved.
The main focus of legislators from the foundation of this State was on licensing, or what minister for home affairs (later Justice) Kevin O’Higgins, referred to in 1923 as the need for “a genuine licensing code, not a bewildering maze of statutes and decisions, which, while creating offences also provided ingenious means of escape for unscrupulous people and for people otherwise honest but who were driven to lie and worse in the struggle for existence.”
Licensing maze
For the government, such sentiments indicated the need to negotiate a middle path through the licensing maze, but it also underlined a tacit acceptance that any restrictive legislation would arouse the ire of the powerful licensed trade. In a Department of Home Affairs memorandum, also in 1923, it was accepted that “they are now vested and not to be disturbed”.
O’Higgins was careful in the language he used, insisting that he was not hostile to the licensed trade or prepared to indulge prohibitionists. He pushed through intoxicating liquor acts to tighten up some of the anomalies and malpractices identified, but was also deliberately vague in addressing the question of whether Ireland was a nation of drunks.
Source: Diarmaid Ferriter, Irish Times, 08/02/15
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