It is with the sort of numbness I imagine results from liquid oxygen slowly leaking into the brain and freezing it bit by bit that I learn that An Garda Siochana is cracking down on late-drinking and on brothels. Marvellous, bloody marvellous. And the iced oxygen on this particular cerebral cake is that this double-assault on free adults comes just as the guardians of the law are once again donning runners, jeans and hoodies and arresting fireworks-sellers on Henry Street - of course, having nothing better to with their time and our resources.
The problem here is not the law-enforcement, for it is right that police forces enforce the law. For far too long we have had so many neglected laws that citizens could reasonably wonder what laws were law-laws, to be enforced, and what laws were non-laws, not to be enforced, either because they were self-evidently cretinous confections which satisfied the whims of Dail Eireann on a particular day, such as the dog-muzzling law, or because they were ancient statutes, such as that which made the possession of facial whiskers in the style of the mere Irishe an offens within an hundredde yarddes of Doblinn Castile.
Nanny mode
The matter comes back - as it can be relied on to do so - to Dail Eireann. Faced with the philosophical complexity which results from freedom for adults to behave as adults, the greater part of our elected politicians revert to nanny-mode, which in Dailese is called "responsibility". So that it becomes the "responsibility" of our legislators "not to send out the wrong message", as if we send them into Dail Eireann to flap moral smoke signals into the air. No, we send them into Dail Eireann to make workable laws to be enforced in a democracy of free citizens.
Now, there is not a country in the EU which has the absurd licensing laws which Ireland has. These are the laws which compel supermarkets to have a separate purchasing area for alcohol, thereby making customers queue twice. These are the laws which make it a crime to sell alcohol on a Good Friday or a Sunday afternoon. Such anachronistic laws remain in place because the Dail, unable to face the appalling prospect of surrendering power over people's drinking habits to the people themselves, has produced a report on licensing of quite wondrous banality, reaffirming the right of legislators to meddle, meddle meddle.
The Oireachtas report, for example, in an initiative of dazzling originality and courage, proposes that supermarkets should be allowed to open on Good Friday and Sunday afternoon in the future PROVIDED that the area for alcohol sales is shuttered-off. It actually supports the retention of the preposterous section 47 of the disgusting 1988 Act - installed at the behest of the publicans - which could, if activated by the minister, deny customer-access to liquor shelves in super- markets only. Off-licenses, of course, would still enjoy customer-access.
Ancient Laws
In the meantime, the old drinking laws, largely passed when our streets were lit by gas and draymen were allowed to urinate in public, are now being rigorously enforced by the Dublin gardai. Pubs open at 1 a.m. are being closed down, and nightclubs are being raided; and I repeat - I do not blame the gardai. Their job is to enforce the law, even when the law is an ass, as it is on alcohol, as it is on brothels, as it is on fireworks.
First brothels: why should women - and generally speaking, we are talking about women here - not be permitted to sell sex in a safe workplace? Why should the use of a safe workplace be criminalised? Why should these unfortunate women be forced onto the street, where the soliciting for the purpose of the sexual act itself then becomes criminal? How are we better and wiser and happier that this happens? Most of all, are we not aware that the laws against working girls are so inherently unfair that they are enforced only patchily or not at all?
And why do we have this absurd and unworkable prohibition on fireworks, when we know the country is awash with them? In the North, the sale of fireworks is now legal - only to adults, and only provided the fireworks are supplied with a safety leaflet with each purchase. In other words, the fireworks retail industry is open, licensed, controlled, and policed.
Counter-productive
But in the Republic, the fireworks industry, like the sex-industry, it is not open, and therefore cannot be policed; yet we know that like purchased sex, purchased fireworks are everywhere, beyond control and amenable only to the outright prohibition which not merely doesn't work, is actually counter-productive. The Archbishop of Dublin is as much prohibited from buying a rocket or a roman candle as is a ten year old urchin; and whoever sells to the child is committing no greater crime than selling to the honourable prelate. I would submit, your honour, that there is a subtle difference.
Law is being used to send out a moral message to suit the particular neuroses of our law-makers, not to enhance our freedoms. It comes down to this. If the Archbishop of Dublin, or indeed any other adult for that matter wants to buy a pint, a bang or a banger at 4 a.m., provided no-one is discommoded, who else's business is it?