We use Google Analytics to see which pages are read and how the site is used, so we know what to improve. This only runs if you accept. See our privacy notice for details.

Seanad
‹ Order of Business

Drinkaware access to schools

Summary

Senator van Turnhout welcomes the decision to tell schools to stop allowing Drinkaware or drinks-industry representatives to enter.

I welcome the news this morning from the Minister for Education and Skills that she plans to write to all schools telling them to cease allowing the drinks industry or Drinkaware to come into them, an issue I raised as a Commencement matter last May and which I am delighted to see come to fruition. It came as a result of a meeting with the Alcohol Health Alliance, which is spearheaded by the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and Alcohol Action Ireland. If anybody wishes to look at the lobbying register, it will be very clear that the meeting was about Drinkaware, although in the newspapers this morning, Drinkaware was trying to distance itself from the drinks industry. Drinkaware is 100% funded by the drinks industry and is the drinks industry in costume. The announcement by the Minister for Education and Skills is on the work of any guise or costume the drinks industry chooses to wear. Will the Leader convey our thanks and appreciation to the Minister for Education and Skills and make this point clear?

Will the Leader also ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he would consider talking to the Road Safety Authority to ask it to cease its relationship with the drinks industry because it is absurd that it has any relationship with the drinks industry, given the road safety issues we were discussing in the House yesterday? There is no place for the drinks industry to be using the bodies of the State to state it is doing their work, while, on the other hand, blocking the essential work that is happening on the Public Health (Alcohol) Bill which is progressing through the House. Will the Leader take his example from the HSE, something we do not hear every day in this House? The HSE came out with a policy last year on ceasing all relationships with the drinks industry. It has a role which is to make money for its shareholders and it should go ahead and do that, but it should not be involved in public health or public awareness campaigns as it has no role to play in them.

Comment on this