Madam, - With so much hot air circulating, the main point of the café-bar controversy appears to have been missed.
Let us look at the facts. Minister for Justice Michael McDowell took the café-bar recommendation from the Commission on Liquor Licensing, and put it out for public consultation. That consultation gave rise to a very healthy debate with various interested organisations and bodies strongly voicing their views. Among those expressing the most severe reservations was the Department of Health, which saw it as unhelpful to its drive to promote healthy social drinking and combat excess.
Having listened to all sides, Mr McDowell withdrew the proposal and decided instead to offer full liquor licences to restaurants and legitimate dining operations.
Now, instead of seeing this as an excellent example of how democracy should work and how government should listen to the public, the media are painting the Minister's decision as a climbdown to vested interests, including publicans and Fianna Fáil backbenchers, and as a bloody nose for the PDs. This makes for good copy but is so far from the truth as to make one very cynical about the press's motives. If a Minister listens and makes changes, he is accused of backing down and being weak. If he refuses to make changes, he is accused of being arrogant and intransigent.
To set the record straight, the café-bar proposals came from the independent Commission on Liquor Licensing. It was never official PD policy. Indeed, this writer and other PDs made strong representations to the Minister against the whole concept, believing that the country is vastly oversupplied with drinking outlets already - one for every 144 drinkers in the State. Additionally, every survey taken to date indicates that the public believes there are already enough or too many pubs in Ireland.
In that context, we should warmly welcome the decision from a Minister who has shown he is prepared to listen and to implement a policy which in the long-term should lead to more responsible and civilised drinking in this country. - Yours, etc,
DES GILROY, Chairman, Progressive Democrats (Dublin North-East), Sutton, Dublin 13.
Madam, - In their latest triumph against the dark forces of common sense, the foot-soldiers of destiny have revealed a hitherto unknown and deeply touching concern for the health of their constituents.
Their selfless courage in overcoming Minister McDowell's café-bar proposals has averted an alcoholic Armageddon that would have submerged us in a sea of gargle, with only church steeples and mountain tops to alert over-flying pilots that there was ever an Ireland in the first place.
Perhaps they might now consider channelling their energies into lesser projects such as the adequate staffing of hospitals, increased policing, better road-surfacing, and other uses of taxpayer's cash which constitute good governance.
This victory, however, may prove pyrrhic in the long run.
One of the more laughable aspects of this sorry charade is that the industry which Fianna Fáil backbenchers have fought tooth and nail to defend has in recent years bloated into an obscene monopoly dedicated to hoovering euro after euro out of the pockets of the Irish punter.
Our pubs used to be world famous for their welcome, their atmosphere and the idiosyncrasies that made them unique. Not any more. The slobbering greed of publicans has seen the rise of the booze-barn, a multi-storey money factory serving alcohol-flavoured swill to the clueless, against a backdrop of foreign football and pornographic music videos.
Anybody over the age of 25 who would willingly endure more than five minutes in one of these obnoxious gin mills needs to have their head examined, as conversation consists of sporadic yelling and most of their pint ends up jostled onto their shoes.
Here in the UK sanity prevails in the licensing laws and alcohol is freely available in corner shops, pizza parlours and video stores. This has not resulted in social breakdown, to the best of my knowledge. Are the Irish so backward they can't be trusted with more freedom of choice? - Yours, etc,
PHILIP DONNELLY, St Albans, Hertfordshire, England.
Madam, - Fresh from their success in forcing Michael McDowell to abandon his plans for café bars, Fianna Fáil backbenchers apparently have their sights set on another target, namely the off-licence trade. They want to restrict the opening hours of off-licences (The Irish Times, June 15th), all under the guise of dealing with the problem of under-age drinking.
This is a gigantic red herring. Having jacked up their prices to exorbitant levels, publicans are finding that customers are voting with their pockets; hence the recent fall in pub sales (and the corresponding increase in off-licence sales). Rather than responding by cutting their prices, it seems publicans are lobbying their local TDs (which in some cases means lobbying themselves) to restrict competition in the marketplace.
I hope this time the radical or redundant PDs will not give in to this pressure from their partners in Government. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL CROWLEY, Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.