Alcohol is the topic on everybody’s lips. Most people on Moore Street, in the heart of Dublin, had heard some news, few could get to the bottom of it.
Amanda has been selling fruit on Moore Street for two decades.
She does not think drink should be sold so cheaply.
“If you stood out here every day, you’d say that too,” she says.
Amanda watches from behind the bananas and the bunches of grapes as people go into discount supermarket Lidl to buy their groceries. Sometimes they bought more drink than groceries, she says; sometimes they bought hardly any groceries at all.
Yet she is sceptical about planned moves to stop alcohol being sold at low prices.
“The price won’t affect problem drinkers. It’s just going to hit the people who are weekend drinkers. Alcoholics will always find the money.”
The young are another country, she says. “As far as the young go, they should put the price of drink up if low prices cause people to binge drink.”
Susan from Dublin city centre agreed. It’s young people who concern her.
“I find that a lot of young people are getting into drink, with all the alcopops and cheap prices. They start even earlier now.”
Making drink more expensive might make young people cut their cloth to suit their measure, she says. She is hopeful the days of “prinking” might be numbered.
“It’s still cheaper than the pubs, though,” says Amanda. “Who gets the money made on drink? If this was really about the wellbeing of the people, I’d be more supportive of it.”
Marcio Neto has been in Ireland for 20 years since leaving his native Brazil to come and fry fish and chips in Dublin.
He goes to Lidl “because it’s cheap”.
Drinking culture
Neto doesn’t socialise outside his home much. “It’s very expensive, so I would spend all the money I’d worked all week to make.”
Ireland has a drinking culture “all of its own”, he says.
“It will break the Irish people if drink goes up. In Brazil, people don’t get drunk. We look at drink very differently. You see people drinking, but you don’t see them drunk. You certainly don’t see them staggering about on the streets inebriated. But then again, Irish people are nice – even when they’re drunk.”
A measure of praise, however faint.
Neto doesn’t think plans to introduce minimum alcohol pricing will work.
“If people need alcohol, they will go and buy alcohol, or steal alcohol if they need to, so putting the price up doesn’t work.”
Trish McCormack and Lily Mooney from Dublin’s East Wall were out getting their messages. One drinks, one doesn’t.
Moderate drinker McCormack says she thinks fixing a minimum price for alcohol is a good idea – depending on who is planning to drink it.
“If it’s going to be drunk by young people, then yes,” she says.
“But some people can’t afford to go out now. They haven’t got the money, so they are going to drink in the house. I wouldn’t be happy if those people were going to suffer when Government Ministers can still afford it on their big wages.”
Mooney is teetotal. She is conflicted by the idea of increasing the price of drink, nonetheless.
“Generally, I think it may be a good idea, but people will still go out and borrow to pay for it. They’ll get into debt.
“Some people would put drink on the table quicker than they’d put food on the table.”
