Alcohol Action Ireland press release, Tuesday, 6 October 2026
Alcohol Action Ireland (AAI), the national independent advocate for reducing alcohol harm, is disappointed by the government’s decision not to increase excise duties on alcohol in today’s budget, which is compounded by the misguided decision to give away €15 million to publicans. This budget is the 13th year in succession that duties have not been touched, so their public health value continues to be eroded by inflation and are now at least 15% lower in real terms.
With excise duties on tobacco rising by a substantial €1 on a pack of cigarettes, it is clear the government understands the value of price controls as a policy option to change consumer behaviour and promote public health. AAI therefore finds it disappointing that government refuses to increase alcohol excise duties, which would have the dual benefit of helping reduce population-level consumption and its associated harms, while at the same time raising much needed revenue to help cover the cost of cleaning up the mess alcohol causes.
AAI CEO Dr Sheila Gilheany said: “Another budget, another sop to the alcohol industry by a government that loves to promote its public health credentials when it comes to tobacco but chooses to look the other way when it comes to alcohol, which is strange considering alcohol harm likely costs the state twice as much as tobacco. The alcohol industry in Ireland records massive profits at the expense of people’s mental and physical health and costs the exchequer an estimated 2.5% of GDP annually in health, justice and lost productivity costs – for 2025 that’s around €15 billion.
“The decision to freeze excise duties and in fact give away €15 million to publicans is yet more proof that this government has absorbed industry spin as opposed to looking at the facts around alcohol, which is Ireland’s cheapest, most harmful and most widely available drug.
“While the details of the government’s support package for pubs are yet to be worked out, any funding that is linked to product purchases is a bad thing for public health and is contradictory to the Department of Health’s stated aim of reducing population-level alcohol consumption, which is still stubbornly more than one-third above the level if everyone drank at current HSE lower-risk guidelines.
“The reality for rural pubs is that changes in licensing legislation at the turn of the century led to a huge growth in off-licenses which flooded the market with cheap alcohol that ate into their share of trade. On top of that, Ireland currently ranks third in the world for pubs per capita with one pub for every 684 adults nationally. Rural counties having even greater density (there’s a pub for every 330 people in Kerry) and even the chief executive of the Licensed Vintners Association has stated that Ireland is ‘overpubbed’. What is certain is that their core issue will remain unless government re-introduces tighter controls on the number of off-licences, or Minimum Unit Pricing for alcohol is increased to stem the flow of cheap off-licence alcohol into the market.
“Also despite the spin about young people drinking less, the reality is that alcohol consumption in the age group 15-24-year-olds in Ireland is rising substantially and steadily, from 66% in 2018 to 78% in 2025 – levels not seen since the early 2000s when youth drinking was considered at crisis levels. The continued rise in youth drinking is a red flag for a coming tsunami of harms from alcohol. Action such as an increase in excise duties is needed otherwise the government is only storing up more problems across multiple areas.
“It is accepted that increasing alcohol excise duties is politically sensitive as there are competing interests between big business and public health and every year the alcohol industry spends huge sums lobbying government in the run-up to the budget. Many other countries take the heat out of the issue by automatically linking excise increases with inflation. For example, in Australia, alcohol taxes are revised twice annually in line with inflation. Doing something similar here would be a huge boost to public health in Ireland.”
The policy contradiction around today’s funding for publicans, who are getting preferential treatment to many other struggling business owners whose product doesn’t kill four people a day, is also a symptom of a more general lack of government co-ordination around alcohol.
Dr Gilheany continued: “A strategic goal of AAI is the establishment of an Office for Alcohol Harm Reduction which would drive coherent government policy development on alcohol and would particularly seek to coordinate across government departments. Alcohol policy is currently spread out over multiple departments including Health, Justice, Finance, Education, Media, Tourism, Enterprise and Agriculture, often with contradictory and incompatible aims. For example, the Public Health (Alcohol) Act, which comes from the Department of Health, aims to reduce population-level alcohol consumption, while the proposed Sale of Alcohol Bill from the Department of Justice looks to increase availability.
“Ireland has previously developed successful strategies to other public health concerns such as reducing sugar consumption and smoking. There is much from those strategies that can be applied to addressing the harms from alcohol, such as the establishment of the Office for Tobacco Control which, according to Micheál Martin, “gave us capacity to deal with the issue.”
“An Office for Alcohol Harm Reduction is surely just common sense and as to why Ireland hasn’t yet taken such an approach is maybe not such a mystery – it certainly serves vested interests to have a multitude of government bodies with no clear oversight of the issues around alcohol harm. As we saw with the fiasco of delaying health information labels of alcohol products, there is a lack of high-level leadership around alcohol policy which, coupled with the ease of access the alcohol industry has to government figures, has created a space in government where industry misinformation has been allowed to flourish.
“To recap, last year government delayed Ireland’s world-leading labelling legislation until September 2028 due to alcohol industry claims labels would impact exports in the wake of President Trump’s tariff bonanza – despite labels only applying to products sold in Ireland. Then, just last month we had the astonishing announcement in the aftermath of the Irish Open golf championship that all tariffs on Irish whiskey were being removed. So now we have no labels, no tariffs and a very happy alcohol industry. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.
“With that in mind, we are calling on all political parties to support such an Office, which would be a game changer in recalibrating Ireland’s relationship with alcohol.”
ENDS
