People who turn up drunk for treatment at accident and emergency departments of hospitals could face additional charges if such a measure is shown to be effective, the Minister for Health and Children said yesterday.
Mr Martin said it was "unacceptable" to have people "wandering around drunk" in A&E departments. If charges proved to be a disincentive to get drunk, he would be in favour of them.
The charges are likely to be among the measures considered by the Government on completion of a survey, funded by Mr Martin's Department, to ascertain the extent to which people are turning up inebriated for A&E treatment.
Speaking prior to his address to the SIPTU national nursing convention in Dublin, the Minister said he had "no difficulty at all" with the Eastern Regional Health Authority considering making parents pay for treatment required by teenagers for drink-related problems.
However, he did not think a distinction should be made between children and adults who presented themselves for treatment while drunk.
He thought it best to await the outcome of the Department-funded survey, which was a national scientific-based study in accordance with international protocol, to determine patterns of alcohol inebriation of people attending A&E departments at the major teaching hospitals.
"When we get feedback from that we should have a better understanding of the scale of drunkenness within A&E departments and we should have it on a more evidenced-based approach," he said.
"Based on that evidence I think we will have to consider measures to reduce the pattern of people turning up hopelessly drunk in our A&E departments." There were two reasons for this, he said. One was the "huge inconvenience" to hospital staff and to genuine patients, many of whom would be there with their families in traumatic situations.
"The other reason is drunkenness leads to accidents, and clearly a lot of people are turning up to A&E having had an accident, injured, because of drunkenness. So that's another important factor in terms of why we want to reduce the overall level of drunkenness.
"If it can be shown that additional charges for those who turn up drunk can act as a disincentive to that kind of behaviour, then I will be in favour of that."