This week, the Taoiseach said he would address factors contributing to alcohol abuse. But some question whether the political commitment is really there, writes Carl O'Brien.
THE LURID GREEN flyer for the German discount store wishes customers a hearty "sláinte", while proclaiming price reductions of between 20 and 30 per cent on a range of beers for the "St Patrick's Day celebrations".
Over in Dunnes Stores on Dublin's Georges Street you have to navigate your way around the stacks of Miller that tower towards the ceiling, retailing at €19.99 for 24 bottles. At just 83c a bottle, it's cheaper than many brands of water in the same shop.
The day-glo posters outside the Spar convenience store on Thomas Street, meanwhile, tell customers they can avail of a special offer of five bottles of alcopops such as WKD, Smirnoff Ice, Bacardi Breezer or Fat Frogs for an impressive €9.99.
Right across the country, it seems, the shelves of supermarkets, garage forecourts and convenience stores are creaking under the weight of cheap booze in the run-up to St Patrick's Day.
The unprecedented access to alcohol is due mainly to the lifting of below-cost selling restrictions, and the liberalisation of liquor licencing which allows retailers to obtain beer and wine licences from the Revenue Commissioners. Between 2003 and 2005, for example, the number of shops selling alcohol jumped by 35 per cent.
But the party could soon be over. Concern over alcohol-related disorder and binge-drinking is growing, particularly since the recent killings of two Polish men - Pawel Kalite and Marius Szwajkos - following their refusal to purchase alcohol for youths in the Dublin suburb of Drimnagh.
Since the killings, radio airwaves have crackled with shocking first-hand accounts of late-night unprovoked assaults fuelled by alcohol. The statistics, too, speak volumes. Consumption of alcohol has risen by around 17 per cent over the last decade, while public order offences have climbed dramatically over the same period. Young people in Ireland are among the highest binge drinkers in Europe, while Ireland as a whole spends more on alcohol than any other EU member state. While the volume of alcohol on sale in pubs is actually falling, there has been a corresponding rise in sales in off-licences and other retail outlets.
This latest wave of public anxiety over the problems of alcohol abuse has sparked the Government into establishing a taskforce report on alcohol abuse which within weeks will recommend a series of measures to help tackle the issue .
Also mindful of growing disquiet at the country's difficult relationship with drink, the Taoiseach said this week that he was prepared to call time on below-cost selling, supermarket special offers, and cheap drink promotions.
"What is clear is that what's happening in the garage forecourts, what's happening in the supermarket, what's happening in the off-licence generally is leading to an excessive amount of alcohol being available," he told reporters. "Beer is now as easily accessible as bread or milk, and in many cases more prominently displayed."
The tough talking has been applauded by a variety of groups, ranging from those campaigning to tackle alcohol abuse to the drinks industry - which is keen to establish its socially responsible credentials - and off-licences, whose owners are feeling the commercial pressures of below-cost selling.
The public, though, can be forgiven for thinking they've heard all this before. The peculiarly Irish habit of hand-wringing over excessive drinking was in full flow last year after disorder and drunkenness on St Patrick's Day resulted in around 1,000 public order offences, widespread vandalism of public transport and a number of stabbings.
A few years previously, the conviction of four young drunken young men for violent disorder or manslaughter in relation to the killing of 18-year-old Brian Murphy outside a Dublin nightclub prompted another bout of navel-gazing in the run-up to St Patrick's Day.
All these national conversations on alcohol abuse have been marked by one feature: the marked absence of political will to get to grips with the problem.
Two strategic task force reports on alcohol have come and gone, and their recommendations to increase prices, reduce the availability of points of sale and tighten controls on advertising remain largely unimplemented.
For example, the Taoiseach's pledge in 2003 to strictly regulate the marketing of alcohol was ditched in favour of allowing the industry to regulate itself. Furthermore, the latest concern over the availability of cheap alcohol follows on from the Government's own decision to axe the grocery order and liberalise the off-licence market.
MOST EXPERTS AGREE that we have reached a tipping point and strong leadership is required to finally get to grips with the issue.
"We're facing into one of the worst times of the year in terms of the explosion in alcohol consumption. Public order issues are just a minor problem overall," says Dr Conor Farren, a consultant psychiatrist who deals with the problems of alcohol addiction and abuse on a daily basis. "The real consequences, frankly, are early death whether through suicide, violence, liver failure or pancreatic disease. People aren't making these connections because of the delay in the onset of some of these problems. We need a whole series of steps to tackle this."
Groups such as Alcohol Action Ireland, a lobby group of health professionals concerned at alcohol abuse, want to see a wider response to the issue than just tinkering with the licensing laws or addressing the problem of cheap drink. The group's executive director, Marion Rackard, says the Taoiseach needs to address the issue in the same way as his persistence and actions had an influence on the quality of life for families in Northern Ireland.
For starters, she says, he could implement the findings of the strategic task force on alcohol in 2004, which proposed a broad range of tough measures. Apart from mandatory breath testing and a lowering of the blood-alcohol limit, the report remains unimplemented.
"Alcohol is not at the top of anybody's agenda. We need an agency dealing specifically with alcohol," says Rackard. "There doesn't seem to be acceptance for the need to decrease availability. We know from the evidence that where effective regulation and decreased availability is introduced, the alcohol harm issues actually decrease."
The group says the influence of the drinks industry is one of the biggest barriers to change and points to the Government's capitulation on plans to regulate alcohol advertising as a sign of their strength.
Not surprisingly, the drinks industry takes a different view. The Drinks Industry Group of Ireland (Digi) says the emphasis in dealing with alcohol abuse should focus on better enforcement of existing regulations and says the imposition of new measures, such as higher taxes, the banning of alcohol advertising or sponsorship would be unnecessarily excessive.
While it acknowledges there is a problem in the oversupply and marketing of drink in some respects, it insists that wider problems relating to consumption and public order are being exaggerated.
The group's chairman, Michael Patten, says consumption of alcohol has actually fallen in recent years, after peaking in 2001, which he puts down to the "demographic bubble" of the baby boom generation born in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
When it comes to the current problems of overavailability and cheap drink, the group's proposition could be best be summed up with the phrase, "I told you so". He says the group warned of the potential problems of drink being used as a loss leader in supermarket price wars by axing the groceries order, but these were ignored.
"The sale of alcohol needs to be treated with respect by the consumer and the seller. There is an opportunity for the new advisory group to examine standards around marketing and promotion. It's not just about price," he says.
One crucial aspect of the debate, however, seems to have got lost in the blame-game between anti-alcohol lobby groups and the drinking industry: personal responsibility. The Taoiseach himself alluded to it this week, when he said society needed to examine its relationship with alcohol. "There is a need for cultural change," he wrote in a Sunday newspaper. "Right now, the way in which we drink is destroying the health of individuals, the lives of families and communities and is all too regularly costing innocent people their lives, whether through violent attacks or deaths on the road."
Some may cast a cynical eye on the sentiment, given that Fianna Fáil shot down an attempt by former minister for Justice Michael McDowell to change the country's drinking habits by introducing continental-style cafe-bars. However, experts agree that changing our drinking culture, rather than relying on legislative measures, will be the key to addressing our love affair with alcohol.
Dr Farren says the notion that drinking to excess should be an intrinsic part of the Irish identity is ridiculous. He says we can look to the examples of other countries which have successfully dealt with their problems through a combination of public support and political will, not unlike that which helped introduce the smoking ban in recent years.
"Fifty years ago, Sweden had a bigger problem than Ireland. They set up a strategic part of government and implemented a series of recommended changes relating to supply, cost, reduction of demand," he says. "They basically targeted alcohol as a major public health problem. Now, they consume one-third less than us. If there is a lesson there for us, it's that if there is public and political will, it can be highly effective."