The drinks industry has rejected one of the key recommendations in the task force report saying it does not believe any further increase in taxation on alcohol will curb alcohol abuse, writes Eithne Donnellan and Arthur Beesley.
Mr Donal O'Keeffe, secretary of the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland, said excise duty and taxation on alcoholic drinks in the Republic are now the highest in Europe and any further increases would simply penalise moderate drinkers.
"The question has to be what are you trying to achieve, are you trying to deal with the problem of alcohol abuse and is taxation a measure to do that, we don't believe so, or do you just want to penalise drinkers? We are all agreed the objective is to try and reduce alcohol harm and alcohol abuse and in our opinion this is not the way to achieve it," he said.
But the task force report said increased taxes had contributed to a reduction in alcohol consumption in 2003 for the first time in 16 years.
Mr O'Keeffe conceded increased taxation does reduce consumption but said it does not deal with alcohol abuse. "The ordinary person drinks a little bit less but the person who has a problem with alcohol will continue to drink as much as they have done and drink in the same way as they always have done. So it contributes nothing to dealing with alcohol abuse," he said.
"And if you look at countries, particularly Scandinavia, that have traditionally been the enormously high alcohol taxed countries to keep consumption down, those countries are now moving away from that. In the last two years Finland and Denmark have both lowered their alcohol taxes because the system just didn't work. It resulted in an enormous amount of illegal cross-border trading, people bringing boot loads and car loads of drink back on the ferries into their countries," he added.
However he welcomed the proposal to restrict the numbers of outlets selling alcohol and he called for the introduction of a national ID card scheme.
Fine Gael also rejected the task force's call for an increase in excise duties on drink. The party's health spokeswoman, Ms Olivia Mitchell, said she was not convinced that higher taxation was the answer to the problem.
"If you look across Europe there doesn't seem to be any correlation between high prices and low alcohol consumption or low prices and high consumption."
Labour's health spokeswoman, Ms Liz McManus, endorsed calls for a ban on alcohol-related sponsorship of sport. "I'm very uncomfortable that Guinness has become so enmeshed with the GAA," she said.
The Green Party's health spokesman, Mr John Gormley, backed the call for more tax on drink and said the Government should curb pub opening hours.
Sinn Féin's health spokesman, Mr Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, said the Government should allocate more money to sports and leisure facilities for young people.