Alcohol Action Ireland press release, Monday, 13 April 2026
Alcohol Action Ireland (AAI), the national independent advocate to reduce alcohol harm, welcomes the vote by members of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) to carry three motions relating to alcohol at the IMO Annual General Meeting at the weekend.
The carried motions are:
- The IMO calls on the Minister for Finance to apply a 15% increase in the excise duty applicable to alcohol, to simply restore the excise duty value to 2014 levels.
- The IMO calls on the Minister for Justice through An Garda Síochána to implement random breath testing for alcohol and testing for drugs with the aim that every driver on Irish roads is tested at least once annually.
- The IMO calls on the Minister for Health to confirm that the implementation of the labelling provisions of the Public Health (Alcohol) Act 2018 (PHAA), will proceed on 3rd September 2028.
AAI CEO Dr Sheila Gilheany said: “The successful IMO motions are each important in their own right and would go a long way to help tackle harm from alcohol if the respective Ministers were to implement them.
“A 15% increase in alcohol excise duties would have the dual benefit of helping reduce population-level consumption and therefore its associated harms, while at the same time raising much needed revenue to help cover the cost of cleaning up the mess alcohol causes.
“Targeted increases in the number of roadside breath tests carried out every year is essential when you consider that research shows drink drivers have a mere 1.3% chance of being caught at a checkpoint in Ireland.
“Meanwhile labels, which were due to come into force next month but have been delayed by government until September 2028 after ferocious lobbying by the alcohol industry, are crucial to efforts to reduce incidences of liver disease, cancer and Foetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder (FASD) in Ireland and indeed to change the conversation about this product which is heavily marketed as risk-free and essential to everyday living.
“However, what the motions also highlight is the disjointed approach Ireland is currently taking to tackling alcohol harm, with three different Ministers responsible for three different but interlinked aspects of alcohol policy. Unfortunately, in Ireland there is no dedicated national strategy to tackle alcohol harm which hinders attempts to fashion a robust strategic response to reducing Ireland’s alcohol burden, now and into the future. It also gives space for vested interests to exploit and to stymie a coherent response.”
Addressing alcohol harm through legislation is currently spread across a number of government departments including Health, Justice, Education, Finance and Media, often with contradictory and incompatible aims. For example, the Public Health (Alcohol) Act (PHAA), which comes from the Department of Health, aims to reduce population-level alcohol consumption, while the proposed Sale of Alcohol Bill / Intoxicating Liquor Bill from the Department of Justice looks to increase availability.
Dr Gilheany continued: “There is a need to deal with alcohol harm in a coordinated, coherent manner. requiring joined-up thinking across government departments. 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.
“Such an office would do away with the siloed, contradictory thinking that goes on presently in government and would give alcohol policy in Ireland focus, consistency and direction. It would have far-reaching impacts on areas such as health, crime, drink driving, education, workplace productivity and children and family impacts.
“This is an approach very much in keeping with advice from the World Health Organization’s Global Action Plan 2022-2030 on alcohol, which highlights the need for increased coordination between health and other sectors such as social welfare, finance, transport, sport, culture, communication, education, trade, agriculture, customs and law enforcement.
“Ireland has previously developed successful strategies to other public health concerns such as the establishment of the Office for Tobacco Control which, according to Micheál Martin, ‘gave us capacity to deal with the issue’. Alcohol is Ireland’s most widely available and harmful drug which costs the state almost twice as much as tobacco. The establishment of an Alcohol Office is just a common-sense approach that would go a long way to reducing alcohol’s heavy burden.”
ENDS
