Kicking alcohol into touch

Campaigners looking to break the link between sport and the alcohol industry will be disappointed by a new Department of Health report, says Dara Gantly

The price of sporting events and the availability of alcohol to teenagers have dominated many family discussions this past week.

First we had the IRFU insisting that fans wishing to buy a ticket for one of the autumn internationals at the Aviva stadium must also purchase tickets for the other three games at a cost of €340 — a 21 per cent hike described by former Irish rugby captain Keith Wood as “incredibly expensive”.

The news came on the same day as the Leaving Cert results, when Alcohol Action Ireland warned of the dangers of cut-price alcohol, with some cans of beer being sold for as little as 66c each. But what perhaps shocked parents more was the Prime Time investigation the following day, which uncovered just how easy it is for under-age drinkers to get alcohol delivered directly to their door and engage in what is termed ‘pre-loading’ before going out.

Are these issues connected? In a way, yes, for the worlds of sport and alcohol in Ireland are still inextricably linked, despite moves to sever the tie.

In April 2008, the Government agreed to set up a working group to deliver on the commitment in the Programme for Government to “discuss the question of the sponsorship of sporting events by the alcohol industry with a view to phasing it out”.

From the outset, the members of the working group — chaired by Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health Dr Tony Holohan — set out the position of their respective organisations. As one would expert, Alcohol Action Ireland, the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the RCPI, the HSE, and the National Youth Council of Ireland all supported the move towards the phasing out of such sponsorship.

Equally predictable was the response from the Alcohol Beverage Federation of Ireland, the Association of Advertisers in Ireland and indeed the IRFU, the GAA and the FAI.

Despite it being Government policy, the Department of Tourism, Culture and Sport also expressed its concern that any constraints placed on sporting organisations in the current economic climate could have very serious implications for their operations.

An objective onlooker could only be disappointed with the report, which failed to make any real recommendation, and was unable to establish the full financial extent of the existing sponsorships of sporting events by the alcohol industry or the terms and length of existing contracts (although it did reveal that the FAI and IRFU maintain that their sporting organisations would not exist without the current support).

And while acknowledging international evidence that alcohol marketing increased the likelihood that adolescents will start to drink, and drink more, if they are already using alcohol, the report — which, remember, is from the Department of Health — says the strength of this evidence in relation to Ireland was questioned by some members. We can guess by who.

“The working group was not charged with finding a means of reconciling these two opposing views nor to assess the relative merits of the arguments made,” the report concluded, adding that it was up to the Minister for Health to now consider the report’s findings.

It is also of note that the report — which was placed on the Department’s website at the start of July — was not press released or commented on by any official at Hawkins House or by the Minister.

Despite the Government becoming more progressive on the alcohol issue in other areas, it seems to have dropped the ball on alcohol sponsorship of sport — or at least kicked it to touch.