We’re Drinking to Excess

IT’S always fascinating to get a new insight into the Irish way of life.

For some time now there has been a growing conviction here that we are becoming more mature as a nation in our attitude to alcohol. Rather than simply getting stuck into a rake of pints, in the traditional manner, we are becoming more sophisticated in our tastes. 

We drink cocktails, we consume more wine, we pace our drinking, we even go out for a meal sometimes in the evenings, even though we know the pubs are open and we’re wasting valuable drinking time. Thanks to the Celtic Tiger, we no longer have a recurring need to drown our sorrows in the demon drink. To put it bluntly, we don’t get drunk as often. 

We’re just like anywhere else really. The old stereotype of the drunken Irish can be consigned to history. 

Well, it’s not as simple as that I’m afraid. Yes, it’s true that people here are more sophisticated in the way they drink. But are we drinking less? Not according to a new book published by The Economist, the prestigious international magazine on economics and politics. 

The book is called The World in Figures and, as the title implies, it is full of fascinating facts about countries around the world and how they compare under different headings, including the amount of spending on alcohol. 

The book says that the Irish spend $1,335 on drink per head annually. Ireland is followed by Britain at $902 for each person, and coming in at number 3 is Finland at $459 per head. 

So we’re way up there. In fact we’re out on our own, right at the top of the world league. So if you didn’t know any better you might think that we’re still a nation enslaved to the booze. 

But it ain’t so. What the book fails to point out is that alcohol is so heavily taxed in Ireland that a high percentage of what we spend on drink goes not to the manufacturers but to the government. So even though we have a very high spend on alcohol, it does not mean that we are consuming nearly three times the amount the Finns drink, for example. 

Of course there are two ways of looking at this. Firstly, the figures show that we are so desperate to consume alcohol that we are prepared to spend a small fortune to get it. 

And secondly, even when you allow for the tax differences, the consumption levels in Ireland are still among the highest in the world – although the gap is not as extreme as The Economist suggests. 

And even if alcohol consumption here among older drinkers is becoming more varied and sophisticated and possibly is no longer out of line with patterns in other countries, the same cannot be said for youth and underage drinking. 

As we all know this is now a major problem in Ireland. Just as their elders appear to be acquiring some sense, the young ones appear to be losing it altogether. 

A walk through the center of any Irish city or provincial town in the hours after pub closing time will confirm this. The experience is always unpleasant, sometimes shocking and frequently dangerous. 

Among the younger crowd here, the aim seems to be to get as drunk possible as fast as possible. Which is why in the bars you see tables of girls where they are all drinking spirits rather than beer or wine — it’s less bulky and a quicker route to craziness. 

Outside the bars in the center of Dublin at night, it is becoming common to see groups of teenage girls staggering around, being sick, or slumped on the pavement in a stupor. A high proportion of those who are sexually assaulted are, in fact, too drunk to remember with any reliability exactly what has happened to them. 

The problem of young people drinking to excess is compounded by the number of underage drinkers here. The law here says that you have to be over 18 to drink alcohol. But under 18s can be in pubs to consume soft drinks, coffee etc. And telling who is over or under 18 can often be extremely difficult for bar owners. 

For that reason many publicans operate a system where young people have to produce some form of ID to get served, especially in late night pubs and clubs. But that has been an informal system which varied from one bar to another and did not have the backing of the general law. And since there was no legal requirement on the younger teens to tell the truth, it was difficult to police, with false IDs and borrowed IDs frequently used. 

In one case here in the past few weeks, a bar owner was taken to task by a judge for not spotting a girl who had borrowed her older sister’s passport. But the judge said virtually nothing to the girl for lying; it was the bar owner who was at fault for serving her. 

To try to cope with the plague of underage drinking, new laws are being introduced here which will mean that in future anyone under 18 will have to be out of a pub or hotel bar before 9 p.m. Others will have to be able to produce photographic ID proving age. Following the decision some time ago to reverse the slight extension of opening hours, this marks another attempt to curb alcohol abuse among young Irish people. 

Of course, like the smoking ban from next year, it is going to cause all kinds of problems. What happens, for example, when teens are out for an evening meal with their parents in a bar (and more and more bars here are as much restaurants as pubs) and the parents want to stay on for a post-meal drink, perhaps an extra glass of wine?

Either the family will have to leave at 9 p.m. or the teens and kids will have to stand out in the rain until the parents are ready. That may be a worst case scenario but it’s not as uncommon as one might think, and it could be a real problem for tourists. 

Apart from the overall spend on alcohol, some other interesting statistics emerged from the new book. You might think that with all the black stuff we drink, the Irish would figure among the world’s biggest beer drinkers. 

But in fact we’re not high on the list of countries which drink large amounts of beer. However, the figures show we now consume 8.6 liters of wine per capita per year, proving how quickly wine consumption is growing here. 

And in spite of all the fuss being kicked up here about the smoking ban in bars from the New Year, the book reveals that we don’t smoke as much as many other countries. Greece has the highest consumption of cigarettes per head at 8.6 per day, while Ireland ranks at 20th with 4.9 cigarettes per capita per day. 

Also interesting, given our new found wealth from the Celtic Tiger and the infamous traffic jams in Dublin, is the figure on car ownership. We have 349 cars for every 1,000 people, which puts Ireland at just 27th in the international car ownership league. 

And despite our low car ownership numbers and our green image, we have high levels of carbon dioxide emissions. The country is ranked the 14th largest producer per head of the greenhouse gas. A lot of that comes burning fossil fuels in energy generation. 

We score reasonably well on global competitiveness, with Ireland ranked at number 14 based on the openness of the economy, the growth of our financial markets and the quality of our infrastructure and political institutions. 

As one would expect from a financial publication like The Economist, there are lots of figures about our economy in the new book. On business environment, which assesses hindrances to enterprise, Ireland comes 10th. And we are 22nd in terms of innovation and technology. 

The cost of taking on an employee in Ireland puts us 14th on a list of the most expensive countries (and if you listen to business leaders here we are climbing up that list fast, towards Japan which, surprisingly, is at the top). 

Equally surprising for me, after all the hype about our Celtic Tiger, were the figures showing that Ireland was only the fourth fastest growing economy between 1991-2001. But it all depends on the level you start from!