Republican News · Thursday 21 August 2003

Let's stop labelling ourselves drunken Paddies

BY PAUL O'CONNOR

Middle-aged commentators - who probably haven't had a night on the town since the year the Pope came to Ireland - would have us believe that our streets are impassable on Friday and Saturday nights with pools of vomit and the bodies of unconscious teenagers

How many of you have walked into a pub with a load of pints on you and asked for a drink? Well, from Monday last this became a criminal offence. If caught, you will face a fine of up to €300 and a criminal record.

Nor is this the only draconian new measure in Michael McDowell's Intoxicating Liquor Act. Publicans who serve drunk customers will be fined up to €1,500. 18-20 year olds will be obliged to carry an age document with them to licensed premises. Plainclothes gardaí will be allowed enter pubs to enforce the law, and gardaí will also be empowered to use camcorders to collect evidence of liquor offences. Welcome to the world of the drink police.

That quietly-dressed guy next to you at the bar, sipping a glass of lucozade, could be an undercover garda watching to see if you have one too many - while outside, a camcorder trained on the pub records everyone who goes in or out.

The new Liquor Act contains no definition of what constitutes drunkenness. There are no plans to breathalyse people suspected of offences under the Act. So at least we won't face the indignity of being made breathe into a little bag under the supervision of a cop because we tried to enter our local pub. But that still leaves the problem of how to decide whether a person is drunk or not. As we all know, some people are drunk after two pints, while others can lower seven or eight with no visible effect. In any case, drunkenness is to some extent a subjective concept - can anyone tell me at just what point the line between being 'tipsy' and drunk is crossed?

But what makes this bill truly offensive is its invasion of our personal liberties. Drunk or sober, who wants to be under garda surveillance when they out for a few drinks? And if somebody does have a few too many, provided they go home quietly and do no harm to others, surely its nobody's business but their own?

Recently, some people in Ireland have been working themselves into hysteria about our "drink crisis". There is talk of an "epidemic of alcoholism". Middle-aged commentators - who probably haven't had a night on the town since the year the Pope came to Ireland - would have us believe that our streets are impassable on Friday and Saturday nights with pools of vomit and the bodies of unconscious teenagers. The Battle of the Bogside, they inform us, is nightly re-enacted on the streets of Ennis and Clonmel - never mind Dublin and Cork. Ireland, we are told, has "a dysfunctional relationship with alcohol". Even the President has mused in public about alcohol abuse as "the dark underside of Irish life".

So, what are the facts? As we are endlessly reminded, alcohol consumption has indeed risen by 40% since the early 1990s - though last year saw a slight decline. But the economy grew by over 50% in the same period - so we are actually spending a smaller proportion of our incomes on alcohol than we did ten years ago. Moreover, back in 1990 when the rapid increase in our alcohol intake began, the Irish drank less, on average, than most other Europeans. Our consumption was 8 litres of pure alcohol per person per annum, compared to just under 11 litres in France. Since then, alcohol consumption in Ireland has risen to 11 litres, while that of France has slightly decreased. But the French, Hungarians, Spanish, Portuguese, Czechs and Danes still consume 10 litres or more of pure alcohol per year - while the inhabitants of Luxembourg have a higher consumption of alcohol than the Irish. Yet nobody accuses the Luxembourgers (or the Czechs, or the French) of having a dysfunctional relationship to alcohol, or muses darkly about alcohol abuse as something embedded in their national soul.

Ireland's alcohol consumption, at 11 litres, is over the EU average of 9.1 litres, but hardly to an extent that would justify dire talk of a national crisis. This is especially the case when you consider that Ireland has the youngest population in Europe, has just experienced a prolonged economic boom, and sells itself to its millions of visitors as the party island. All those boozy Brits staggering around Temple Bar are certainly boosting the national total of alcohol consumption. And are our streets really the war-zones they are often portrayed? The overwhelming majority of those who pour out of pubs and clubs in the small hours find their way peacefully and safely home.

No doubt, there is a problem with underage drinking. There are problems with binge drinking, as people telescope their drinking into a few hours on Friday and Saturday nights, and with the over-concentration of large pubs in our city centres. But these are social problems, with social and economic causes. They are not the product of some complex deep in the national psyche, and will not be solved by moralising or by draconian and unworkable legislation.

Is it more than a coincidence that some of the severest commentary on our drinking habits has come from the West Brit section of the media? Emer O'Kelly - who regularly rants about the "drink culture" in the Sunday Independent - wrote three weeks ago that drunken violence reveals our national psyche in its true colours, and the 19th-century Punch cartoons of leering, simian Irishmen are an accurate portrait of the nation. This article was more than usually explicit. But in much of the commentary on the "drink crisis", the old racist slur of the drunken, brawling Paddy can be seen peeping through, newly dressed up in 21st century clothes.

Rather than adopting an attitude of simplistic moral condemnation, perhaps journalists and politicians should ask themselves why so many young people feel the need to drink themselves into a stupor. Perhaps they should question why Ireland - like other Western societies - seems to run on drugs. We pick ourselves up with caffeine, and ease ourselves down with tranquillisers. We are dependent not just on alcohol and nicotine, but sleeping-tablets and anti-depressants.

Then there are the illegal drugs. A UN study in 2002 found that Ireland had the highest rate of ecstasy and amphetamine use in Europe - four times the European average. 138,000 people use these drugs at least once a year. We have the joint highest cannabis usage in Europe, and are the third highest users of cocaine. There are at least 13,000 heroin users in Dublin alone, with completely inadequate treatment and rehabilitation facilities. Crack cocaine is appearing with increasing frequency on our streets. Surely people should be crying out for action against the pushers and the drug barons? If alcohol can destroy a life, heroin or crack cocaine does it faster. But the drug problem is left to fester, with no sense of urgency about coming up with new means to tackle it. People are rightly concerned about under-age drinking - why not about young people being exploited and driven into crime by pushers?

But the priorities of our moral crusaders lie elsewhere. Every week, some spokesperson bemoans the amount of "productivity" lost to drink. A few months ago I listened to a caller on the Joe Duffy show complain about the drinking habits of the Irish. He had spent many years in America, and was shocked to find Irish people drinking in pubs on weeknights. How, he wondered, could they concentrate on their work next morning? He admitted finding difficulty adapting to Irish culture - in America, your job got 100%. Other callers followed - businessmen complaining about absenteeism and employees hungover on Monday morning.

Now, while nobody wants the whole labour force to be permanently hungover, it's not the business of government to ensure employees turn up on time and fit for work. Yet there can be no doubt this is one motive behind the government crackdown on drinking.

Martin Luther King had a dream. Ministers Martin and McDowell have a nightmare. Imagine an Ireland in which nobody drinks or smokes. An Ireland of shiny happy people who leap out of bed each morning and rush enthusiastically to work. At lunch, they pore over heath-food magazines while munching a lettuce leaf, and all day long greet everyone with gleaming, Hollywood smiles. At seven o'clock - having worked two hours overtime at the office - they go to the gym for a relaxing workout. Then its home to bed, and fast asleep as soon as the light's off - for by then, some scientist will have shown that sex is bad for your health.

The Ireland of the future? It would be enough to drive you to drink.