Madam, - In the current discussion about Ireland's so called drink problem, no one has taken up the cudgels for those most concerned, the drinkers.
At the recent Labour Party Conference someone suggested putting a special tax on the drinks industry. He must have been the delegate from Mars. Like your correspondent who favours replacing pubs with libraries and swimming pools, he does not live in the real world.
The heavily subsidised public libraries and swimming pools, few as they are, do not do a roaring trade. The numerous pubs, frequently do, and it is their customers who pay the subsidy. About 75 per cent of the price of a pint ends up in the coffers of the Minister for Finance, either directly in excise and VAT, or indirectly in a hundred other taxes.
We do not live in a dictatorship. The élite, the better educated, the ruling class, or whoever these people are, can instruct us not to drink, but we drink anyway. Reducing or increasing pub hours, reducing or increasing the number of licences, and so forth, are not going to make a scrap of difference.
To drink or not to drink is a matter of personal freedom and personal responsibility, personal rights and personal duties. Now that we are one of the world's more prosperous nations, we can afford to drink more than ever and we are doing so.
Anyone who has read Ulysses will appreciate that drink plays a much smaller role in society today than it did a hundred years ago. We have films, television and many other diversions that did not exist then. It seems to be only a matter of time before Joyce's world is replaced by a world like Clockwork Orange, where violence is endemic and the bars sell non-alcoholic drugs.
Certainly, there is no doubt that heavy frequent drinking is bad for us and for society, especially when it leads to criminal offences such as drunken driving and public rowdiness. But in small doses alcohol is likely to prolong life. A pint a day keeps the heart specialist away (see Scientific American, February 2003). Pubs are central to our social life and make Ireland an attractive place to visit, and incidentally, they all serve tea and coffee, though it might be wiser to stick to the black stuff in some parts of the country.
Alcohol consumption has declined rapidly in recent months. So, we have a recession! Let us try and drink a little more, so that the Minister does not have to close those hospitals, and, while we are on the subject, why don't the hospitals charge those patients who use hospital wards as binge recovery rooms? - Yours, etc.,
BRIAN CROWLEY, Leinster Square, Dublin 6.