Drink so cheap, €5 a week is all you need to be at risk
Plea to protect health by ending ‘pocket money’ prices for alcohol
ALCOHOL is now so cheap women can put themselves at risk for less than a fiver a week – while it costs the average man less than €8.
For just as €7.65 men can buy 17 drinks, putting them in the low-risk category if they drink that amount in a week.
The cost to put women in a low-risk category would be €4.95, and campaigners are warning that these ‘pocket money’ prices are a danger to our health.
Alcohol Action Ireland is urging action on a ‘minimum-unit pricing’ law that would push the cost of the same amount of drink up to €17.
Under the proposed law, an alcohol unit will have a minimum price of €1, but at the moment the cost is falling, a survey by the group found. Just two years ago the same number of drinks would have cost €8.49, or 84c more, for men – and €5.49, or 54c more, for women.
Alcohol Action’s Eunan McKinney said: ‘The principal advocacy around us doing the survey is that we are endeavouring to try and highlight the fact that, again, alcoholic drink is getting cheaper.
It’s becoming more affordable instead of less and minimum-unit pricing hasn’t been implemented.
‘Were it implemented it would make a significant impact in relation to that survey. The ridiculously cheap alcohol prices wouldn’t be the same, they’d have to go up,’ he added.
Minimum-unit pricing has not been introduced here, because the same law has been delayed in Stormont. The plan is to introduce it at the same time in both halves of the country, to prevent people buying cheap drink in the North and driving it south.
The survey confirms the urgent need to stop the strongest, cheapest alcohol being available at a very low price, the group said.
Mr McKinney said: ‘The exceptional affordability of alcohol from off-trade sellers, across a retail landscape, dominated by a few major corporations, continues to sustain Ireland’s excessive use of alcohol. As long as alcohol can be purchased at “pocket money” prices, and so easily, the public health objectives to reduce alcohol harms will not be reached.’
He added: ‘We are now almost two years on from the enactment of the Public Health (Alcohol) Act and inertia marks the implementation of the central policy measures on pricing, promotion and product information.’
Alcohol Health Alliance Ireland chairman Professor Frank Murray said Taoiseach Micheál Martin had demonstrated a strong commitment to public health alcohol policy when he was health minister.
He added: ‘The findings of the Alcohol Action price survey must act as a catalyst for the new Government and Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly, to honour, without further delay, its longstanding commitment to introduce minimum pricing of alcohol products.’