Matt Treacy From New Year’s Day, all sales of alcohol in Ireland are subject to a minimum pricing regulation. 



This follows Cabinet approval that was granted last May with few dissenting voices. Minimum pricing is regarded by many as a key means to reducing heavy drinking.

That proposition is impossible to prove conclusively although studies from parts of Canada where similar measures were imposed do appear to show a moderate link between consumption levels and pricing – which would also apply presumably to the pricing of any discretionary or consumer good. If there was a minimum price for chocolate, then less chocolate would likely be sold. Same goes for phones or scooters or deodorant.

I mention chocolate because some people who support increasing the price of strong liquor might argue it would be unfair to use similar measures to discourage people on lower incomes from buying cheaper bars of chocolate.

However, there are also people who would argue that the sugar tax would lead to a healthier population. Indeed, there is already a tax on sugared mineral drinks since 2018 and similar proposals to tax fast food. It’s all very much on a spectrum you see. A spectrum of what some people think is good for others.

Those some people assume that they have been granted some sort of membership of a secular Calvinist Elect which, secure in its sanctimoniousness and the knowledge that they are better than everyone else, get to decide whether someone else ought to be able to buy their kids a burger meal, and maybe get themselves a cheap bottle of wine.

Last week it was also reported that some people in the HSE are in favour of banning cigarettes. This is one of several options that they want to be considered along with an even more punitive taxation policy, bans on shop sales and so on. Again, I can see valid reasons why encouraging people not to smoke might be a good thing. However, there is a difference between persuading people that smoking is not a healthy pastime – which it is not if one smokes a lot – and making it illegal for them to do so.

If someone knows the health downsides of smoking – or indeed of drinking cheap vodka as surely everyone does – and still decides to do so, then that it is their prerogative.

Betting is another area under close scrutiny these days. Punters are anxiously waiting to see what sort of measures the British government might introduce on foot of a concerted campaign underlined by extensive reports into the alleged harm done to society by gambling.

And it is the harm to society that has been put front and central as the narrative on betting has transformed it into yet another “public health” issue. Among the possible restrictions being considered are limits on the amount of money a person can deposit into their account with an online bookmaker. There are also those who wish to limit the amount of money a person can stake on any individual bet or within the course of a certain time period.

An affordability criterion would mean that someone whose betting profile was subject to question would have to produce bank statements and even mortgage statements to prove that they could afford to punt. That would be an egregious intrusion into a person’s affairs, and you may be sure that if the state and its array of “non-governmental” busy bodies get their way, such probing would be extended to other areas.

Indeed, there are already climate extremists who are floating balloons about limiting how much people should be allowed to spend on what they consider to be products or activities such as travel that are deemed to be harmful.

Legal restrictions on betting already exist and they are strict. It is also the case that as even moderately successful punters will know that bookmakers will limit or even prevent such bettors getting their money on. And you don’t have to be threatening to out sun-dance JP McManus or have a Barney Curley springer in your shed to find yourself in that crux.

The thing about all of the stuff the puritans want to restrict or ban, of course, is that they are part of the fabric of humanity. People like to have a drink and perhaps indulge other habits that some Pollyanna deems to be unacceptable. We would be a far duller species were all of those things to be forbidden. There are sufficient laws to discourage and punish activities that do harm to others. The way an individual lives their own lives and whether they choose to smoke or drink more than average or have a bet is none of the state’s business.

As I have pointed out in regard to the Covid restrictions, the most extreme supporters of monitoring and controlling peoples activity are on the left. The same applies to the demand to ban or reduce betting to something akin to a family board game. What the left hates is any kind of activity that involves risk.

Economically that is manifested in their wish to destroy all individual or voluntary co-operative enterprise. In all other spheres it is evidenced in their desire to abolish any independent artistic or philosophical or spiritual activity that is outside of the control of the state. There are and have been no socialist societies that have not done both.

Their ideal society is the same as that of the proto socialists of the early 19th century who wanted to turn people into human insects living in the equivalent of beehives or anthills. Ants and bees are guaranteed pupa to grave social security and a free health service. Unless of course they evince any sign of questioning their indenture to the collective in which case they are killed for the good of everyone else.

Apart from all of the sanctions required to completely regulate the crooked timber of humanity, which as Kant said “nothing entirely straight can be made,” the world would be such a dull place if these people had their way.

So, our first reaction to more decrees to create socially healthy drones ought to be rejection. Or better still derision as when someone like Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould thinks it any of his business or any part of why he was elected to advise people to “Gamble responsibly this Grand National.”

Hopefully, some chap in Knocknaheeney on his way to place his fiver each way on Minella Indo saw this sage missive and thought to himself “The hell with it. I’m not going to risk ruination and woe by this reckless act.” And was much the happier watching Rachel coming around the elbow at Aintree knowing that his life was just that bit safer and secure than it had been before he was shown the error of his ways. Dull but safe. Like the best bees.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

Minimum Alcohol Pricing And More Nanny Statism

Matt Treacy From New Year’s Day, all sales of alcohol in Ireland are subject to a minimum pricing regulation. 



This follows Cabinet approval that was granted last May with few dissenting voices. Minimum pricing is regarded by many as a key means to reducing heavy drinking.

That proposition is impossible to prove conclusively although studies from parts of Canada where similar measures were imposed do appear to show a moderate link between consumption levels and pricing – which would also apply presumably to the pricing of any discretionary or consumer good. If there was a minimum price for chocolate, then less chocolate would likely be sold. Same goes for phones or scooters or deodorant.

I mention chocolate because some people who support increasing the price of strong liquor might argue it would be unfair to use similar measures to discourage people on lower incomes from buying cheaper bars of chocolate.

However, there are also people who would argue that the sugar tax would lead to a healthier population. Indeed, there is already a tax on sugared mineral drinks since 2018 and similar proposals to tax fast food. It’s all very much on a spectrum you see. A spectrum of what some people think is good for others.

Those some people assume that they have been granted some sort of membership of a secular Calvinist Elect which, secure in its sanctimoniousness and the knowledge that they are better than everyone else, get to decide whether someone else ought to be able to buy their kids a burger meal, and maybe get themselves a cheap bottle of wine.

Last week it was also reported that some people in the HSE are in favour of banning cigarettes. This is one of several options that they want to be considered along with an even more punitive taxation policy, bans on shop sales and so on. Again, I can see valid reasons why encouraging people not to smoke might be a good thing. However, there is a difference between persuading people that smoking is not a healthy pastime – which it is not if one smokes a lot – and making it illegal for them to do so.

If someone knows the health downsides of smoking – or indeed of drinking cheap vodka as surely everyone does – and still decides to do so, then that it is their prerogative.

Betting is another area under close scrutiny these days. Punters are anxiously waiting to see what sort of measures the British government might introduce on foot of a concerted campaign underlined by extensive reports into the alleged harm done to society by gambling.

And it is the harm to society that has been put front and central as the narrative on betting has transformed it into yet another “public health” issue. Among the possible restrictions being considered are limits on the amount of money a person can deposit into their account with an online bookmaker. There are also those who wish to limit the amount of money a person can stake on any individual bet or within the course of a certain time period.

An affordability criterion would mean that someone whose betting profile was subject to question would have to produce bank statements and even mortgage statements to prove that they could afford to punt. That would be an egregious intrusion into a person’s affairs, and you may be sure that if the state and its array of “non-governmental” busy bodies get their way, such probing would be extended to other areas.

Indeed, there are already climate extremists who are floating balloons about limiting how much people should be allowed to spend on what they consider to be products or activities such as travel that are deemed to be harmful.

Legal restrictions on betting already exist and they are strict. It is also the case that as even moderately successful punters will know that bookmakers will limit or even prevent such bettors getting their money on. And you don’t have to be threatening to out sun-dance JP McManus or have a Barney Curley springer in your shed to find yourself in that crux.

The thing about all of the stuff the puritans want to restrict or ban, of course, is that they are part of the fabric of humanity. People like to have a drink and perhaps indulge other habits that some Pollyanna deems to be unacceptable. We would be a far duller species were all of those things to be forbidden. There are sufficient laws to discourage and punish activities that do harm to others. The way an individual lives their own lives and whether they choose to smoke or drink more than average or have a bet is none of the state’s business.

As I have pointed out in regard to the Covid restrictions, the most extreme supporters of monitoring and controlling peoples activity are on the left. The same applies to the demand to ban or reduce betting to something akin to a family board game. What the left hates is any kind of activity that involves risk.

Economically that is manifested in their wish to destroy all individual or voluntary co-operative enterprise. In all other spheres it is evidenced in their desire to abolish any independent artistic or philosophical or spiritual activity that is outside of the control of the state. There are and have been no socialist societies that have not done both.

Their ideal society is the same as that of the proto socialists of the early 19th century who wanted to turn people into human insects living in the equivalent of beehives or anthills. Ants and bees are guaranteed pupa to grave social security and a free health service. Unless of course they evince any sign of questioning their indenture to the collective in which case they are killed for the good of everyone else.

Apart from all of the sanctions required to completely regulate the crooked timber of humanity, which as Kant said “nothing entirely straight can be made,” the world would be such a dull place if these people had their way.

So, our first reaction to more decrees to create socially healthy drones ought to be rejection. Or better still derision as when someone like Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould thinks it any of his business or any part of why he was elected to advise people to “Gamble responsibly this Grand National.”

Hopefully, some chap in Knocknaheeney on his way to place his fiver each way on Minella Indo saw this sage missive and thought to himself “The hell with it. I’m not going to risk ruination and woe by this reckless act.” And was much the happier watching Rachel coming around the elbow at Aintree knowing that his life was just that bit safer and secure than it had been before he was shown the error of his ways. Dull but safe. Like the best bees.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

17 comments:

  1. This article displays an almost pathological or callous ignorance of the effects of alcohol abuse and online gambling on the individuals, their loved ones and society at large.

    Scotland introduced minimum alcohol pricing with none of the downsides that Matt foresees in Ireland. Minimum alcohol pricing will not harm pub drinking; it is aimed at the cheap, high strength alcohol products which large supermarkets purvey to the detriment of the pub.

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    1. Barry - I think there are two separate dynamics at play: the individual pursuit of their own happiness and the state's obligation to stand up for its citizens. To what extent both individuals and states do either is another matter.
      I watched Prime Time last night and it seemed clear to me that the student won the argument in her debate with the Save Ireland From Cider advocate. She made the point that as soon as the price hiked in Scotland the use of drugs escalated. She also spoke of the discriminatory effect of the measure - it hits the poorest. The rich can still pay for their wine without giving up some household essential.
      I would be very suspicious of a government that did not seek to increase public health but I am far from convinced that this is the way to do it.
      There is much in Matt's piece that I disagree with but to describe it as pathological or callous, seems hyperbole.
      The whole tone of the discourse behind the government move seems to be one of the undeserving poor not deserving their tipple.
      We will now have booze runs from the North and probably an increase in substance abuse. And we have seen recently how the centres that help combat addiction risk closure due to lack of funding.

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    2. Matt Replies

      Well, if there's one thing I cannot be accused of being ignorant of amongst all the things that I can be correctly adjudged to be ignorant, it is the effect of drinking too much.

      Nobody nor no social forces made me drink too much. I drank too much because i liked drinking and ignored several hints that it was not good for me.

      Nobody makes anyone else drink either, nor do they make them gamble money they cannot afford, nor take heroin, nor do any of a multitude of things that are bad for themselves, and often bad for others including people not directly connected to them.

      People do things because they choose to do them. If you don't accept that, then there is no point in arguing about anything connected to humans because we are no different to insects who would seem to have no free will, or at least an extremely limited one.

      Which was the ideal of people like Fourier and Saint Simon whose mad ideas were turned into an even more monstrous "science" by Marx and Lenin and which inspired other totalitarians like the Nazis.

      It is the worship of the collective which can only be imposed through total state control. Which is the ideal still of all totalitarians no matter how cuddly and caring they may affect to present themselves.

      If someone wants to buy a bottle of cheap drink after a hard day earning enough to keep themselves in the game for another week, then they ought not to be prevented from doing so by the dictat of someone who thinks they are better than them.

      And who furthermore sanctimoniously pretends to have the best interests of a small minority of people who cannot control their own behaviour at heart, and whose interests they think ought to determine what happens to everyone else.

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  2. Anthony

    I admit that I may have gone OTT in my description of the tenor of Matt's article but surely something has gone wrong when, for example, a quantity of supermarket booze costs more than the equivalent of bottled water. There is certainly an element of class hypocrisy in the discourse around alcohol abuse (the chief nurse in the drugs and alcohol charity that I worked for ended up diabetic because of her daily evening sip or more of wine) but the social ills associated with addiction do fall disproportionately on the poorest.

    On the issue of gambling, it is be becoming a bureaucratic nightmare to place a simple Grand National or football bet because bookies require you to open an account. That betting companies make such humungous profits through online betting and fixed odds machines and suck so many vulnerable gamblers into their orbit of addiction most certainly is the business of state and society.

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    1. Barry - drinking alcohol is socially acceptable in a way that smoking is not. Otherwise people would be sent outside pubs to drink their pint along with the smokers. A socially acceptable endeavour is being punished. I would rather see the government subsidise E readers, books and open more libraries than target drinkers. This looks to me to be on a par to increasing the price of condoms and morning after pills to discourage people from having sex in order to avoid unwanted pregnancies.
      We do want a society where there is less abortion, less alcohol consumption, less cigarettes smoked, fewer health problems. But is this the way to do it? Do you think the drinking habits of the rich will change because booze is dearer?
      I don't gamble - it has never interested me. But the gambling cartels have the same contempt for citizens that their drug counterparts have.
      I think we need to take a social approach to these matters rather than Matt's libertarian one. But is has to be social strategic and not the moralising of the Save Ireland From Cider lobby.
      I do think the

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  3. This increase in alcohol prices, whether for the right reasons or otherwise, will only affect the lower income strata in society. The very rich whose wealth is accumulated from working-class labour and production thereof, will still have their "liquid lunches" while those who can no longer afford to consume alcohol work blindly on. These minority wealthy parasites drink more than the majority consume, plus their drinks are stronger - whiskey, brandy, champaigne etc - than those consumed by the lower paid. The units some of these people consume dwarf the cheap 4% lager drank by the targeted class. In fact, these people in many cases boast of "champaigne breakfasts", no health scares there I perceive!! If working-class people drink early they have "a problem". Yet, when the bourgeois elements do the same, with champaigne or cognac, its "jolly good fun", a "liquid breaky" so they boast. The hypocricy makes me sick, lie after lie, and us mugs swallow it.

    Caoimhin O'Muraile

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  4. Anthony

    What Matt fails to realise that addiction can be both a disease and the outcome of rational decisions. Addicts invariably drink and shoot up to deaden pain; pain which often has its roots in childhood abuse or neglect or hopelessness created by the socio-economic devastation wrought on communities such as the former mining towns and villages of South Yorkshire or Merseyside and Dublin in the early 1980s.

    Addiction can also be the result of socially learned behaviour e.g. drinking (and often dysfunctionally masculine) cultures of sporting clubs, police and military services and the City.

    I cannot speak for what happens in Ireland but I do know that in England pubs which are valuable social capital are closing partially because of home drinking which cheap supermarket booze helps top facilitate.

    But you are right moralising will not stop Ireland or anywhere else's alcohol problems. The debate as will drugs needs to be led by science not by politically engendered moral panics.

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  5. Barry is correct when he says "pubs which are valuable social capital are closing", they are. Those remaining open are a shadow of their former selves. I remember looking as a kid with envy at the packed pubs and Workingmens Clubs. In the seventies was frequenting these havens myself, underage granted which was part of the exitement. By the eighties the boozers were still packed as Thursday nights were darts nights, I played for my local. A dozen pints and rounds of sanies (sambos), sometimes pie and peas. Great nights they were, brilliant. Tuesdays were darts nights in the WMCs, again I played for my club, again sandwiches followed the game. Once a year the pub and club outings took place. To anybody who watches Only Fools and Horses, the Jolly Boys Outing episode was a fair description of such outings. Basically we went to get Oliver Twist at the seaside, have a good feed and back on the beer. Great days, great culture, all gone. Today drugs have replaced alcohol in many instances, and this price hike here in Ireland will fuel this. Former mining areas in Britain are now baron areas, as the NUM warned, of hopelessness where the miners social club has been replaced by heroine pushers. The 26 county government have not a clue, they aren't sure if they're having a shit, shave or shower when it comes to alcohol abuse. Still as long as their rich friends get their share and the subsidiesed Dail bar remains open what else matters!!!!

    Caoimhin O'Muraile

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  6. Barry, when was the last time you got 'rubbered' and I don't mean having one for the road? You come across as if you should have a 'blow out'....

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    1. Quite regularly in my days in Queen's University in my 20s, Frankie. But I am long past the days of getting rat arsed for the sake of it as I find it pathetic.

      I actually enjoy the experience of drinking real ale for its quality and not for its intoxicating properties. Maximum three pints of delights such as Black Sheep of Nelson's Blood bitter at ABV 3.8% is a good night in a freehouse or non-tied pub is good for me.

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    2. Barry, I have tried the bitters in cities like Nottingham, Liverpool and Manchester but wasn't taken by them.

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  7. Barry getting rat arsed and being rubbered are not in the same ball park. Trust me......

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  8. Anthony, bitters are an acquired taste. But being delivered from the cask rather than the keg means they are free of the additives that makes keg beers (and I include the Smithwick and Guinness that I grew up with) such a bowel turning experience.

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  9. I prefer spirits Barry - I like a Smithwicks but in general I have never been enamoured to the bitter.

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    1. I do have a bottle of Bailey's on special occasions, Anthony.

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  10. Agree with Matt here, though I'd go further and legalise most substances for human consumption. If somebody wants to feel better with a plant, fungus, pill or powder and it's not being forced on them is it really the Govs responsibility to say no? I get that not all substances are the same but the same old tactic of criminalization just flat out doesn't work.

    Legalise, educate, tax and rehabilitate were required. I'm reminded of the late Bill Hicks who pointed out that all the great music came from people 'real fucking high on drugs'.

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    1. The same with people who want to climb mountains, swim in dangerous areas, play risky sports. A government however has to think in societal terms rather than being a guardian of unfettered libertarianism. It should seek to improve public health and public health services and find ways to reduce any drain on those services.
      This measure is pretty useless and discriminatory - the rich can drink to their hearts content. If the Shinners oppose this move they will get in by a landslide!!!

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