Accident and emergency consultants from hospitals across the State are to have an input into an investigation into alcohol abuse by young people.
The consultants have been invited to address the joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children on the impact of alcohol abuse on attendances at their casualty departments.
The committee has also invited submissions from representatives of the drinks industry before it makes recommendations on how the problem should be addressed.
The assistant principal of the Health Promotion Unit at the Department of Health, Mr Shay McGovern, told a meeting of the committee yesterday that a pilot study carried out at the Mater Hospital, Dublin, in 2001 showed alcohol was a contributory factor for one in four patients attending the A&E department.
He said the Department of Health was anxious to see if this was representative of other areas and it had therefore just commissioned a study of the impact of alcohol abuse on A&E attendances at five major hospitals.
The hospitals are: the Mater and St Vincent's Hospitals in Dublin, Cork University Hospital, University College Hospital in Galway and Waterford Regional Hospital.
"In addition to measuring the proportion of alcohol related attendances in A&E, the study will provide information on the patterns of alcohol injuries and the context in which drinking had taken place.
"The study will take approximately one year to complete," Mr McGovern said.
Referring to a previous study, he said that in the Western Health Board region alone over a one year period, 18 teenagers aged 14-17 years were treated in A&E departments for alcohol overdose and 239 adolescents were treated by GPs for alcohol problems. He said that in the last decade Ireland had the highest increase in alcohol consumption among EU countries and that alcohol related problems cost Irish society about €2.4 billion per year.
Asked by the committee chairman, Mr Batt O'Keeffe, why young people were going out at night "to get absolutely stocious drunk", he suggested young people were influenced by what they saw around them, including the excesses of adults.
The national alcohol policy adviser, Ms Ann Hope, said young people when drinking were taking on the pattern of serious drug users.
They wanted "to get a buzz, to get high, to get out of it. That is why we are so concerned".
She added that it would take a generation to change society's attitude to alcohol. A variety of strategies would be required.
Mr McGovern said drinking patters had also been influenced by changing lifestyles and expectations and more disposable income.
"The adverse effects of alcohol extend beyond physical health issues to mental, social and financial problems.
"These problems range from a once off problem [fall, accident, fight, unprotected sex, violence] to a recurring problem [poor school/work performance, financial hardship, relationship difficulties], chronic illness [cancer, liver damage] and to a sustained dependence [alcoholic disorder]," he wrote in his submission to the committee.
He added that alcohol abuse was also a significant factor in suicide. Senator Mary Henry, who is on the board of the Rotunda Hospital, said the increase in alcohol consumption by young girls was astonishing.
"We have people coming into the sexual assault unit with blood alcohol levels of 300 to 400 mg. I would have thought they would be dead by then," she said.