We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
NEW FIGURES SHOW there was a significant increase in the number of garda age cards issued in 2013, with indications that this could be linked to the shift among young people to buying their alcohol in supermarkets.
In response to a recent parliamentary question, Minister for Justice and Equality Frances Fitzgerald revealed 61, 468 cards were issued by gardaí last year. This is a considerable surge compared to the previous year when 47,625 were issued.
The sole purpose of these cards is to verify a person’s age when they are trying to buy alcohol or tobacco and the fee to get one of them is €10.
It has been shown in recent years that young people’s purchasing trends have shifted as more and more they go to supermarkets to buy their alcohol. This may account for the surge in cards, as supermarkets can often be more strict when it comes to asking for identification.
This shift in the drinking culture of young people has been worrying experts over the last number of years as dangerous levels of binge drinking continue. Harmful drinking in Ireland is highest among 18 to 24-year-olds at 75% according to research published this year.
Dependant drinking in Ireland is also highest among this age group.
“This situation is particularly worrying when you consider the explosion in the number of outlets selling alcohol at very cheap prices in the off-trade in recent years, particularly below-cost sales in supermarkets,” commented Suzanne Costello, CEO of Alcohol Action Ireland. “Young people, who generally have the least disposable income, are heavily influenced by price and tend to buy the cheapest, strongest alcohol products.”
Currently they can get these products in the off-trade at pocket-money prices, with bottles and cans of beer costing less than bottles of water and strong spirits also available at very low prices.
The organisation has been calling on the government to legislate to discourage this culture among Ireland’s youth – and not just those under the legal drinking age. They say minimum unit pricing, in particular, would help reduce the harm caused by the very cheapest alcohol while having “little or no impact” on the low-risk drinker or on pubs, clubs and restaurants.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Shocking appeal by the PSNI
@Alan Bolger: The PSNI brought the war to ordinary decent republicans giving them no option but to fight back. Its time to get to the bottom of this and move on.
@Neil Neart: I presume you mean RUC and not PSNI.
@GrumpyAulFella: well back Eoghan. I asked you a question the other day and you disappeared. As a few of the other posters pointed out, you always disappear when the questions don’t suit your narrative.
@James Beattie: are you addressing that to me or some guy called Eoghan? I presume that you’re responding to the wrong post.
@GrumpyAulFella: it’s for you Eoghan, you obviously think the same when you replied
@GrumpyAulFella: same force just different name aka b specials
@James Beattie: ah ok Mary.
@Mona Murphy: i think there are more than 3 times more Catholics in the PSNI than were members of the RUC. 32% versus less than 10%, so more balanced but still some way off being entirely balanced from a community perspective.
Into the 3rd decade of this and worse happening In Guantanamo Bay. Two Obama administrations and now one Biden administration. some there for 17 years without charge.
The southern government guilt of collusion in allowing rendition flights from Shannon.
@Peter McGlynn: fail to see what relevance the USA and Ireland have to the torture of British citizens by PSNI .
@Garry Brady: no psni in 1971 it was ruc and it was Irishmen who were tortured
@Peter McGlynn: what is the Southern Government you refrr to. Is it the Government of Ireland ? Refer to it properly please
@Peter McGlynn: think you left out a fella in between….
@joebloggs: You mean the Government of Ireland which is not under foreign rule? as opposed to the part of Ireland which is and was when the torture of those Irishmen happened.
It was the RUC that arrested the men in 1971, not the PSNI. It was British Army soldiers who tortured them in Castlereagh and other barracks. There is a very good book called ‘Cruel Brittania’ which gives the history of the use of ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques by the members of the Intelligence Corps. Don’t forget that the European Court of Human Rights decided initially that these techniques did not amount to torture.
@Patrick Brompton: Yes and we were part of EU while all this torture of Irish citizens was going on. That ruling also gave the go ahead to others to do the same the world over.
@Patrick Brompton: all very true and while not condoning the events these,are standard procedures used by many military organisations to extract information from captive and there fore expected by combatants. Further highlighting that army were not a suitable force to be engaged in what was a police role. All most all of this type of activity and other crimes attributed to the army was because they weren’t trained to deal with civilians. The use of military forces in support of the civil power is now widely accepted but should never be used in a policing role
@Barbara Coleman: and so was Brittania an EU member at the time.
Do you post Brexit that the European Court would more emphatically come down on the UK over its illegal dirty war if it was happening today?
@Paul Murphy: Sorry Paul, but that is a load of horse manure. Britain had been pulling – forced out of colonies all over the globe since the end of WW2, so dont tell us this was a new situation for them.
General Kitson had written a book/manual on how to deal with revolutionary movements in the occupied zones, how to turn communities and different political movements against one and other, and how its own forces could arrest, torture and beat confessions out of people, before their fates were decided.
What happened to the Hooded men was but one piece of Kitsons box of trix. The North in those early days was just one big testing ground in the British militaries experiments in counter Insurgency warfare, the far most important being the use and control of Loyalist Paramilitaries, including the Shankill Butchers, as the ultimate instrument in terror against the nationalist community. As we can see today, this was monster from Britains Pandora Box that cant be entirely switched off and put back in the box.
The RUC, just like its former self the RIC which was formed in 1825, was always a paramilitary police, which were armed like an army, stayed in Police Barracks, as opposed to police stations. The sectarian one-party state in the north survived its first 50 years by such a force.
For all the methods of torture, murder, black propaganda which were part of Kitsons bag of trix, they never managed to defeat the IRA or the community from which they took their support. In fact, the IRA came out of the war at the end, a lot, lot stronger than when they went into it in 1969.
@Patrick Brompton:
And ever since governments all over the world have used that ECHR decision to reject the alleged torture of suspects.
@Angela McCarthy:
The IRA goal was a United Ireland but almost 30 years have passed since their 1993 cease fire !?.
@Angela McCarthy: I take it you forget that the British Army were deployed to Northern Ireland to protect the Catholics from the Protestants and had never been deployed on what was considered to be home turf by the,UK government. The methods mentioned had been used before Kitsons book and are even in use to this day as the recent gameshow type event based on ARW depicts. It has been proven to this day that the UK government was neither forced out or pulling out of Northern Ireland and had the British Army been given free reign as in Malaya the IRA and others would have ceased to exist.
have your say