Minimum Alcohol pricing to be signed into Law

What rubbish is this? Excise itself has never been higher and your claiming alcohol is still the cheapest it's ever been?

You just can't stop misrepresenting things to push your own agenda can you?

Could it possibly be that alcohol was maybe too expensive in the 90s then if its 50% cheaper but we still have the most expensive in europe? Also why are we still arguing about it when statistics also show we are drinking less than we were 20 years ago when supposedly alcohol has never been cheaper and consumption is still dropping? Apparently cheap booze doesn't lead to the country drinking more as has been claimed by multiple people on the anti-alcohol bandwagon.

And im saying if its cheaper now than its ever been yet still more expensive than anywhere in Europe while our consumption is dropping steadily for going on 2 decades and there are 14 countries with higher consumption according to the OECD then why do we need MUP?

The real answer is we dont for all the reasons i stated in my post, the only reason it ever made it onto the politicial agenda was to save the pubs from becoming obsolete and when they realised that doing it for that reason was A illegal and B a really bad look politically they pivoted it to health.

They even admit to their impending obsolenceses when they directly lobbied government complaining that the public werent buying as much alcohol as they used to.

FYI they also lobbied the government directly 29 times that were reported begging for MUP to be introduced. God knows how many times they did it prior to the introduction of the lobbying register and who knows how many unofficial approaches were made.

AAI lobbied for it 4 times..... i wonder who had more of an interest in it?

I remember keenly back in the early days of the MUP debate a representative of the VFI or LVF making the incredulous claim that it was far safer for people to drink in pubs as barstaff are "trained" and "qualified" (LOL) to not over serve customers and people were drinking far more at home. I can probably count on one hand the amount of times ive seen people be refused service in an Irish pub.

Alcohol is a dangerous drug by nearly any metric i.e. health, social, economic, crime (see the economist image from Lancet)etc. So the government needs to stop anything that could promote abuse of it, such as selling under the cost.

Having said the above, the cynic in me does think that it is a happy coincidence that the vintners association want MUP, and not for the public health element.

Well the Michael Martin himself repealed the Groceries order in 2006 which is what used to stop below cost selling so why not just reintroduce that instead of the draconian unnecessary MUP? There are numerous better ways to fix this problem they claim needs fixing, like reintroduce a version of the groceries order or simply increase excise and ring fence the funding but instead they chose the one that helps out a very specific large lobbying group and does nothing to help the exchequer and instead pushes more money into the very industry they are claiming is causing problems?

"Much of the alcohol harms relate to on sale consumption, which MUP does not address." Not sure what you mean by on sale consumption. If by on sale you mean reduced price, I would argue that MUP directly tries to address that by setting a minimum.

You're right moderate consumption is not dangerous. Most moderate drinkers are not buying slabs on cheap beer.

MUP is a crude tool to try and address the issue.

Just on the pubs, the authorities are hardly likely to hear about a publican standing free drinks because who would tell them.

In other news I thought of a work around for an off licence proprietor wanting to do a favour for a friend.

Let the customer buy on tick at the full price ie. €47.34 but he never clears his account just paying off €30 now and again.

Far fetched but possibly legal.

Solving the issue of problem drinking is indeed a noble aim and will have benefits for all of society.

To this end everyone should be playing their part to help.

Moderate drinkers who drink at home are asked to make a sacrifice for the greater good in solving a problem not of their making.

It's not a nice feeling as a citizen of a democratic state to think you are being treated as "collateral damage" when your elected parliament is introducing legislation.

Sorry I wasn't clear by "on sale" I meant consumption on premises of pubs or nightclubs, as opposed to "off sales".

People bought slabs \ crates of beer on offer for parties, christmas that kind of thing. Just because it was bought by one person doesn't mean it's all going to be drunk in one weekend, by that person.

I've bought several 6 bottle wine case deals for below MUP, wines which may get drunk over the course of weeks, or longer, depending on the wine and what's for dinner. I've bought bottles of €5 wine as cooking wine.

It's a crude tool which has been chosen because of the influence of one particular lobby.

Bottle of bucky not affected by mup fwiw, for all the "cheaper than pocket money" rubbish. Most underage drinkers were probably paying near mup anyway, as the cheapest places to buy were the supermarkets, which are also the strictest on ID.

A second fwiw me and my father in law got three slabs between us before christmas because of MUP. We're not even through one yet - we generally have 2 a week each from the stash. That's not the extent of what either of us drink, but shows that below MUP slab does not equal big party nights/ drinking to excess.