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The Irish state is back After nearly a decade in which many Big Government restrictions have been lifted from Ireland, helping turn it into the Celtic Tiger, it seems Big G is back again.
Irish pub landlords will now be fined up to thousands of pounds if they allow their customers to become drunk (no, I’m not kidding). Happy hours are also banned, when landlords can decide what prices to charge for their drinks, at any particular time of day.
This should raise another nice little line of regulation for another bunch of twerpish bureaucrats to supervise, rather than working for a living, interfering once again in the market trade process of exchanged goods.
Pub landlords will also be deemed responsible for anyone who is drunk, after they have left their premises. Which is nice. It seems even Ireland, for millennia a land of little or no government, is getting Big G back with a vengeance.
If we dug a little further would you suspect the EU is under this somewhere? I wonder…
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I read in Reason mag some time back that a similar law was going to be imposed in Virginia, US.
Insane. Er, whatever happened to property rights?
I blame the English.
Eamon
I think you’ll find that it is also an offence in the UK (and has been for may years) for a publican to serve someone who is drunk.
English loutish behaviour is a disgrace. In three months living in Paris I found one puddle of vomit in the street. Was it a coincidence that an English soccer team was in town that day?
The EU almost certainly has nothing to do with this, any more than English pub licensing hours are the result of foreign influence.
It might be an idea for English people to stop attributing every ill of the world on the EU. There are plenty of real horrors perpetrated by that body, the CAP in first position. But you’re letting local bureaucrats and meddlers off the hook.
The Moseleys, the Webbs, the Jays, the Kinnocks, the Howes, the Blairs. These people are not ‘Johnny Foreigners’.
Another fallacy is this “ancient Ireland land of freedom” tripe. Another bit of Rothbardian crankyness from reading too much Robert E. Howard no doubt. The Irish had slavery when the English arrived in the 13th century…
Antoine
Of course you are right about Ireland not being some Idyllic haven prior to the Normans arriving. My post above was tongue in cheek, referring to and old Irish habit of blaming everything including the weather on the “Brits”.
Eamon
Interestingly enough, when licencing laws were relaxed recently in Ireland, there was a marked improvement in the problem of drunken disorderliness.
Strange that.
Eamon
Similar “reforms” (read: increases in meddling) are being planned in Scotland. It’s too much of a co-incidence; the EU must be behind it somehow, we just haven’t worked out the connection yet.
Interestingly, when Scottish licencing laws were last relaxed (anyone else here old enough to remember when pubs closed at 10pm, and didn’t open at all on Sundays?), there was a very noticeable decrease in binge drinking.
Technically it has always been an offense both in Ireland and the UK for a barman or landlord to sell alcohol to a person who is drunk.
There is a lot of debate about how to define that point but the legal issue, however unenforceable has always been there.
My family are from the country (Limerick) and rules about pubs are generally only observed when the Gards come for a nightcap, which, in my experience is rarely before 3am.
Of course, the licensing rules in most EU countries are much more relaxed than in the UK…
A few points here.
First, Antoine and Dave O’Neill are right that licensing laws on the Continent are generally more liberal than those in UK and Ireland. Nobody loves EU-bashing more than I do but it is more likely that Dublin lawmakers are behind this not Brussels nabobs.
Secondly, I don’t know about Ireland, but in the UK it is not an ‘offence’ to serve a drunk customer. It is condition attached to a liquor licence. If Irish licensing law was similar (and the Irish generally did adopt laws similar to those in the UK – hence Eamon Brennan does have a point) then imposing a financial penalty on pub landlords who ‘allow their cutomers to get drunk’ does represent a dramatic increase in the burden imposed on them.
For heaven’s sake, some people get drunk on a glass of shandy. Is the pub supposed to stop serving alcohol altogether?
Antoine Clarke writes:
English loutish behaviour is a disgrace. In three months living in Paris I found one puddle of vomit in the street. Was it a coincidence that an English soccer team was in town that day?
Well, the article was about Ireland, but notwithstanding…
Personally, I take the blame for everything every Englishman ever does wrong in the world. It is all my fault, sorry. If some lout in Malaga throws up on a pavement at 3am, while on holiday, as my blood brother, in our race of pure-bred Englishmen, better than all others in the world, in our nation over all, as one tribal family, it is all down to me. As was colonialism, slavery, Oswald Moseley, Victorian prostitution, and the seventies comedy sketches of Jim Davidson. Once again, my apologies.
The EU almost certainly has nothing to do with this, any more than English pub licensing hours are the result of foreign influence.
Well, there is the news from Scotland as well, on new regulations too, due to be announced very shortly. You’ll notice these regulations also call for a ban on ‘happy hours’. Coincidence? In a foreign EU country? I may be getting just a bit too cynical these days, but I wouldn’t be overly shocked if in two years time some EU directive is found propping these things up, particularly on the removal of publicans to change their prices when they want to.
I’m sure our masters aren’t too bothered if we’re wandering about in a daze, discussing Proust, and the triumphs of the novel, Ulysses, but deciding what we exchange our own private property for? This is outrageous, and must be stopped immediately.
I must admit I have been reading a lot of George Smiley books recently. In those books, nothing is a coincidence! 🙂
Another fallacy is this “ancient Ireland land of freedom” tripe.
Tripe is a nice word. I like it. I think I’ll use it again. It so rounds off a civilised discussion, don’t you think?
Another bit of Rothbardian crankyness from reading too much Robert E. Howard no doubt.
Well, I didn’t say ‘libertarian paradise’, I said ‘a land of little or no government’. I take this from my reading of Norman history, particularly the Anglo-Norman invasions of the 12th and 13th centuries, especially from the Pembrokeshire region of Wales, and my longstanding love of the work of Robert Graves, that Irish-English-Welshman of Mallorca, and a fascinating cultural historian of Irish history, particularly of its Ogham runes, and other associated alphabetic discussions, particularly his books The Crane Bag and The White Goddess.
RTE also have a very nice site about early Irish history, which you might want to visit here. Here’s a quote:
I wouldn’t dare challenge you on Rothbard, but am I allowed to form a tenuous link between ‘ little or no government’ and ‘politically it was very fragmented’?
The Irish had slavery when the English arrived in the 13th century…
And so did the Athenian Greeks, and the Roman Republicans, and the American Signatories to the Declaration for Independence, and we probably have it too, all over Europe, in hotel kitchens and brothel bedrooms everywhere. Thank God for the British Royal Navy, which started wiping off slavery from the North Atlantic sea routes, and anywhere else they could find it, long before the Americans gave it up. I also claim credit for this, as my blood right.
Cheers! X-)
The ostensible reason for these laws being brought in is due to a marked increase in drunken disorderliness since the introduction of more liberal licensing laws. I do not go into Dublin City at night, but the anecdotal stories are horrific, and the evidence the next morning nauseating.
However the Minister for Justice, whilst a member of the liberal Progressive Democrats, has spent most of his political life in Fine Gael, an authoritarian party (at least for most of its existence).
There are adequate laws already on the books, but the primary problem is lack of police, or more correctly police who have forgotten that their role is to serve the public, instead of hiding in their stations, or conducting frequent checks on things like the payment of car tax.
BTW, there is no EU hand behind this, although there is a constant fantasy about the introduction of continental cafe culture. About as likely to happen as an Irish heatwave.
“Happy hour” was abolished in the US ten, fifteen years ago. I’m not sure if it was abolished by statute, or merely abandoned in the face of threatened litigation. Might be a state-by-state thing. At around the same time, there was a high profile cases of a bartender in Massachusetts being brought up on manslaughter charges after a customer got into a drunk driving incident on the way home. And no, I don’t recall that there was any especially egregious misdeed on the part of the bartender.
Since that time, we have become so increasingly be-nannied and be-lawyered, a new pressure group was launched today to protest the lack of automatic stopping mechanisms on the electric windows of Detroit cars (most other cars have them already, I gather). To demonstrate the dangerousness – I’m not kidding – they put a balloon in a car window and popped it.
Really, is it safe to drive your kid around in a car if he’s got a skull like a balloon and doesn’t scream when you squeeze it? Can people so numb they crush baby heads in windows without noticing be trusted to drive cars anyway? How come nobody ever asks these important questions?
No mention of how many accidents have actually happened, and how serious they might have been (which leads me to suspect there haven’t been any…<ominous drumroll>…yet).
But here’s the interesting thing: I heard this on three separate radio stations this morning, affiliated with three different national networks. And relatively long pieces on it, too. This is a news story? Says who? Are the connections between journalists and activists really incestuous enough that they can whistle up radio time on demand, in what is hardly a slow news period?
Edmund Burke writes
The ostensible reason for these laws being brought in is due to a marked increase in drunken disorderliness since the introduction of more liberal licensing laws.
Edmund, do you happen to remember the 80s in the centre of Dublin. Thousands pouring out the pubs at closing time to fight their way to the quays, where they would enjoy a leisurely punch-up while waiting for the bus.
I find it very hard to believe that the current situation could be worse than it was then.
Eamon
You still get plenty of Happy Hours in Seattle. Either half price food and local beer, or in one place I know, half price cocktails.
Secondly, I don’t know about Ireland, but in the UK it is not an ‘offence’ to serve a drunk customer. It is condition attached to a liquor licence.
This is something I had heard, but this sounds more likely. Even so, there are few things more punishing to a landlord than removal of the license.
Ireland has always had some form of license laws and when I’ve been in Dublin I’ve always noticed them enforced. Out of Dublin and into the country, historically I’ve noticed the observation is less rigorous.
Eamonn
I didn’t live in Ireland in the 80’s, so I have no idea if it is worse now than then. However the “perceived wisdom” seems to indicate that it is worse now than ever before.
Part of the problem seems to lie with night clubs closing at the same time, so it would appear the problem might be the same as in the 80’s, except occurring later on, and therefore more drink has been consumed. The new licensing laws don’t cover this.
The solution would be to scrap opening hours altogether, allowing pubs to open at hours they wish, subject to respecting the rights of the community in which they operate.
Also of interest is the debate surrounding smoking in pubs. From Jan 1st, it will be forbidden to smoke in any workplace, a law ostensibly designed to protect pub workers. Now this one I think will run and run across EUneuchistan.
“This is something I had heard, but this sounds more likely. Even so, there are few things more punishing to a landlord than removal of the license.”
Dave,
Until recently the licence could not be withdrawn but the police could raise objections to renewal of the licence. However, in practice it is, and always has been, a rule more honoured in the breach than in the observance and, in any event, is very hard to prove and enforce.
However, never has a landlord actually been responsible for the drunkenness of his clientele. Your attempts to downplay this as ‘more of the same’ is nonsensical. The wording of laws matters, Dave. If it didn’t then there would be no point to laws at all. Any fool can plainly see that this new provision is serious ratcheting up of the burden on public house owners.
David,
I’m not trying to “down play” anything nor, in particuar, to be confrontational.
I was mistaken, obviously, in my understanding, and you have corrected me.
Use of language like “any fool can see” is needlessly insulting and inflamatory – I happen to agree with you, but I don’t appriciate the accusation.
Well, I see nothing wrong with revoking liquor licenses for serving beverages to already drunk customers (note: Already drunk, as opposed to ‘could get drunk off this beer,etc), but I see no link between that and licensing hours. How can one claim that the ability to serve drinks at any time of the day can be linked to loutish behaviour? The root cause is consumption of alcohol, not its availability. After all, most of the drunken louts don’t tend to engage in the most responsible behaviour while ambling their way home.
I don’t know when and if Ireland was a land of no or little government. Having lived there for the past 16 months, it seems to me this is another bit of conventional wisdom that needs to be updated. Given the tiny size of the country, the place seems at least as regulated and almost as drowned in bureaucracy and government meddling as France. If only to judge at the number of ongoing tribunals looking into all kinds of endless corruption stories.
The green island is just another bit of the EU, and one that is too small to resist its diktats. Case in point, the Nice referendum. We’ll keep asking you until you give us the answer we want. Now move along.
Other than that, it’s been quite a bit of fun but at this stage, I can’t wait to move back to good old New Hampshire. There is something to be said for a place that has no income or sales tax and “Live Free Or Die” on every license plate.
I don’t know when and if Ireland was a land of no or little government.
As I recall Eamon Develera liked government to be in charge and people to be in their place. At least that’s one of the reasons my father gave for never going back to Ireland after WW2.
David Carr:
“in the UK it is not an ‘offence’ to serve a drunk customer. It is condition attached to a liquor licence.”.
David Carr:
“The wording of laws matters…”
Licensing Act 1964 sec. 173:
“Section 173(1)
An offence is committed if any person in licensed premises procures or attempts to procure any intoxicating liquor for consumption by a drunken person.
Section 173(2)
An offence is committed if any person aids a drunken person in obtaining or consuming intoxicating liquor in licensed premises.”
Sound like an offence to me!
Dave,
I assure you there was no defamatory intent on my part. I employed the expression ‘any fool can see….’ merely as a figure of speech aimed at the generality and not you personally.
I did live in Dublin in the 1980s and the 1990s and I don’t recognise Eamonn’s portrait of violence. What I do remember was that Dublin’s nightlife only really got going in the mid 1990s. Before then, apart from a few pubs and the odd nightclub, there wasn’t really all that much to do. That didn’t matter because there weren’t really all that many people living in Dublin then and there certainly weren’t many tourists.
Today’s “problems” referred to relate to the huge increase in the number of people going out and the inability, due to intrusive government regulation, of certain services (transport and fast food outlets) to deal with them.
No problem David, I just wanted to make clear I wasn’t trying to downplay these things.
Landlords do have a lot of problems, especially with NIMBY’s.
Well, I see nothing wrong with revoking liquor licenses for serving beverages to already drunk customers
What happened to my right to get drunk? I enjoy it and I cause no harm to anyone.
I have never ever had a drunken fight despite a mispent (well spent?) youth involving far too much alcohol. I don’t see why drunkeness should be of any interest to the government unless it results in damage to property or persons.
The core problem is this: When you pertvert the justice system such that punishment is removed and the victim is ignored, crime will rise. The only way left to tackle it is to remove freedoms from everyone.
Can anyone answer me this? There are some people who should never be allowed to buy alcohol at all and who have a criminal record to prove it. Why is it against human rights to ban alcohol sales to known trouble makers, but OK to ban sales after certain times to everyone, irrespective of whether they are likely to cause trouble or not?
Chris,
Yes you will also find a provision in 1964 Licensing Act which makes it an offence for a landlord to ‘allow drunkenness on his premises’. But it is an ‘offence’ that attaches to the privilege of being granted a licence. In effect, they are conditions which apply to the holding of a licence.
However, this new law applies in Eire and not the UK but I wonder what the previous position in Ireland was and why exactly the Irish government felt they had to start levying fines on pub landlords? Presumably whatever regime was in place previously was felt to be inadequate.
Jonathan L’s point should be reiterated. Any offense that might be committed while drunk: vomiting on the sidewalk, getting into fights, general rowdiness should be the issue, not the drunkeness itself.
A second point: the unintended consequences (externalities) of gov’t regulation of liquor sale and consumption must be taken into consideration. In the States, the legal drinking age being set at 21 has led to binge drinking by youths who have had no experience with alcohol prior to leaving the nest at 18. Setting short opening hours for pubs leads to binges at “last call”. And here in Albuquerque, NM, because most of the Pueblos (Indian Reservations) surrounding the cities don’t allow alcohol (presumably on some view that the native constitution is ill-disposed to it) we have the highest incidence of drunk driving fatalities of any place on the planet!
And of course, we all remember what Prohibition led to…..
Many apologies for the following because it is toally off the point.
Can any of you people fucking read. My name is spelt E-A-M-O-N. One N. Only one Fucking N. If you read back through the posts virtually every one of you insists on spelling it with two. If you want my brith certificate I can provide a facsimile.
One N. OK.
Eamon
Frank
I don’t know what city you were living in but the Quays, come Midnight on a Saturday (The only place you get a bus home from) was frquently violent.
Being an arrant coward myself, I often wondered why I bothered.
Eamon
Heh, Eamon I know how it feels. When in the US I get people calling me Andy all the time. I don’t respond since it is not my name.
Eamon – I’d love to see your brith certificate! ;-p
(I turned into Liz despite my protestations that I prefer Elizabeth – I think it was a grammar-school method of undermining my sense of self. Or something.)
Elizabeth, Andrew
Cheers
Eamon
Hi Eeeeeammmmon-
How are you?
Ok, Eamon,
I can only go from my own experience and my memories of Dublin from 1985 to 1996 don’t include being exposed to significant violence on the streets but I do remember it being a far more parochial place than it is now and you had to look real hard to find decent night-life.
As for buses on the quays, those nightbuses only started running in the early 1990s, but my point still stands, these “flashpoints”: bus queues, taxi ranks and fast-food outlets are created by government restriction. If you think there is no government restriction on fast food joints try getting planning permission for one.
Initial problem was that at the end of the night in dublin or wherever all the people were released out unto the street at the same time. And what usually happened is that fights would occur at chippers/bustops/taxiranks whereever. The semi-liberalising of the pubs that took place recently only meant that a) More people would be in fights because b) there would be more drunks due to the slightly later opening hours. Ie the pubs were opening later but still everyone was released unto the street at the same time to engage in scumbag behaviour. Another problem was that the restrictions on pub licenses caused many of the existing city center premises to balloon out into barn like superpubs. Defeating the intended purpose of conserving traditional pub culture.
Now the idiots believe that liberalising pub hours equates to a increase in violence so they will roll back the closing times on pubs. This will slightly reduce the violence but by not so much, but enough for the government to claim another doublethink victory.
Ah interesting debate lads, I wrote an article for the New Statesman back in June on the subject.
I worked as a barman in Ireland for 4 years so I think I have a fair grasp of Irish people and their drinking habits.
http://www.gavinsblog.com/mt/archives/000343.html