This afternoon.
Further to eye-popping alcohol off-sales price hikes…
…via Lucille Destrade, KU Leuven and Michel Destrade, of NUI Galway:
One standard drink in Ireland contains 10 grams of alcohol, so the minimum price for one standard drink will now be €1.
A 12.5% bottle of wine has 74 grams of alcohol and it cannot now be sold for less than €7.40. A bottle of spirit like vodka or whiskey cannot be sold for less than €21. A point to note here is that the price of a bottle of champagne (which cost more than €7.40 in 2021) or fine whiskey (which cost more than €21 in 2021) remains unchanged.
The main issue is that it is a price floor instead of a tax. The HSE believes that “people drink more alcohol if it is cheap. If you raise taxes for alcohol, you are raising the cost of alcohol for everyone. Minimum pricing most impacts people who are drinking alcohol harmfully. It is designed to target the heaviest drinkers who seek the cheapest alcohol, which means it will have the greatest effect among those who experience the most harm.
However, no evidence is provided for these claims. Is it wise or correct for the Government to base an economic policy on the assumptions that price is enough to deter heavy drinkers and that heavy drinkers only seek cheap alcohol?
Why minimum pricing for alcohol won’t reduce harmful drinking (RTE)
Yesterday: Can-Kicking Exercise
Meanwhile…
On 2nd Jan 2L Cullen's Irish Cider was €3.79 in @Aldi. On 3rd Jan it was €1.99 in an effort to flog a product that would be unsellable. On 4th Jan it is €8.36. It will end up in a skip.
Cullens, an Irish Micro brewery, now have a product they can't sell. #rtept
— Ultan McPadden (@UltMcP) January 6, 2022
Just did a Lidl UK search tis about Euro 4.50 for a budget red. I do remember the Xmas trek to Newry for Toys & stuff. Who sez history repeats? FATWA baby!
For my sins, many years ago I had to do some research on minimum unit pricing for booze. I don’t have my notes to hand, but from memory the borough health authorities in the UK were most concerned about people who drank in excess of 100 units a week. These were the people who were most likely to be occupying hospital beds and on the relatively fast track to liver transplants. The conclusion that the public health England people I spoke to at the time came to was that the damage was being done by cheap, ‘strong beer’, the finger pointed heavily at 7-8% beer in 500 mL cans. The UK attitude at the time (perhaps still) was to make efforts to make access to booze less convenient, so they were quite warm towards minimum unit pricing.
Ironically one of the more systematic reviews I’ve read is of Irish origin, those keen to read it can google “The Efficacy of Minimum Unit Pricing, Fiscal and other Pricing Public Policies for Alcohol”. There’s also a systematic review on BMJ Open via “Evidence for the effectiveness of minimum pricing of alcohol: a systematic review and assessment using the Bradford Hill criteria for causality”
Super headline by the way, I am anti pating a drink later already…
so where is this skip with all the free cider in it?
asking for a friend, obvs
Shouldn’t upslab photos be banned?
Hehehehehehe
please don’t skirt around the issue
You can hear the laughter of SF all the way to Newry in a way that the Chablis & Sancerre set don’t really understand. Plus it’s not even a health levy, its just pure extra profit margin for those hard up supermarket owners.
Aye.
The IRA Army Council learned a while back that all they had to do was sit back and let the coalition of clowns do their electioneering for them.
Putting up the price of cheap drink during a pandemic has them laughing their nuts off.
MaryLou has already measured up the curtains …
Tiocfaidh ár láger
van hire companies should do well outta this
However, no evidence is provided for these claims…. Show us the science Government always base their economic policies on predictive models rather than hard data as the data doesnt exist until they implement the policy.
will be interesting to see if premium beers will jack their prices or if they will be happy with the massively increased sales as no one will be buying dutch gold when they can have a craft beer for about 30c more
It is incorrect that there has been no evidence provided.
This was introduced after studying what happened when this was done in Canada which resulted in people drinking less and fewer alcohol related deaths.
The policy has been in place in Canada and Scotland already for a number of years, which is most likely where the Irish government got their data from. Does anyone know if it has been an effective policy in Canada and Scotland so far?
According to twitter:
In Scotland there was a decrease in Alcohol-related harm (hurrah), but there was an increase in illegal-drug-related harm (boo).
That’s some citation alright Cian
Yup.
But did you see how I gave a source? and that allow people to make up their own mind on how useful it is?
Ha haaa. Good one.
‘According to the internet…..’ will be interchangeable.
To the best of my understanding, the application of minimum unit pricing in Canada has been inconsistent so it’s hard to generate evidence either way. Threre’s a short article in New Scientist last year referring to a modelling study that suggests that MUP is associated with a reduction in alcohol-attributable deaths. Original paper is behind a paywall, and, tbh, life is a bit too short to spend time on it, but if you want it, you can get the NS article via google: “Minimum alcohol pricing could reduce alcohol-linked deaths in Canada”.
“Findings of this study showed that MUP had produced greater reductions in quantities purchased in households that purchase larger amounts of alcohol, with no increase in alcohol expenditure among most low-income households. The study also shows that MUP can achieve similar reductions
in different jurisdictions. Because MUP targets cheaper offtrade alcohol, it may help to reduce drinking particularly in those households that purchase higher volumes of cheaper alcohol.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(21)00095-5/fulltext
Dunnes have put the price of Tyskie up from €1.59 to €2.00 though…
Good catch, interesting paper.
In fairness, NUI Galway are experts in the cheap drink. Spanish Arch, every Friday night.
Cullens isn’t a micro brewery. There is no mister Cullen. I believe it is produced by Bulmers.
You won’t find Cullens anywhere on Google Maps.
AFAIC, the whole thing is a strategic stunt by FFG
playing around with the old Reliables,
Ye see it every year
And it is 100% populist behaviour by Government, past and present.
So they can park their high handed knobbyness about our relationship with alcohol.
If ye paid attention to the few Annual Budget Speech reviews I did back in the day, ye’ll have spotted some upcycling of standard Budget speech fayre, into PR announcements into Spin,
and back into the Recycle bin for the next Budget Speech
And a few summertime leaks in between. And something for Derek Mooney to write about （⊙ｏ⊙）
Like how many spin arounds has the Rural Affairs or the HAP increase gotten?
Anyways
As I said – this minimum pricing thing is nothing but a Stunt
Populist toying with the Old Reliables, for polling affect.
Ye already saw the 100 yoyo payment towards Utility/ Heating bills – which incidentally only pays the Providers their increased charges. So rather than deal with the big Boss smarty-pants Pay Pack +options, Private Equity controlled Providers, our Government would rather make sure we all pay their ask.
However If Government, and this area is pretty much equally shared between FG Paschal and FF Michael Mc, so if they really wanted to tackle the rising costs of Utility/ Heating bills, they would – with the stroke of a pen btw, remove VAT on Domestic Owner Occupied Customer Accounts.
Simple as that.
As for the increased costs of booze. Again the Providers albeit in this case Retailers, mostly Multi Chain Purchasing Power Behemoths with sealed accounts, are pocketing the cash, with a healthy contribution towards the Tax take results. (Another multi use announcement btw.)
And before long, they – Government, and their PR Gurus and SPADS, will squeeze another good news – aka populist announcement, in a time they need to grease the polls, and wind down the minimum price regulation, and spin and spin the Country into a Party; thanks to the Government.
I reckon the timing will be around an opening up / ending restrictions, VE Day event.
SUCKERS!
How is it a “100% populist behaviour by Government,”? It just pisses people off.
There will be no increase in tax take, if anything it will reduce (if this works as expected people will drink less, so a reduction in alcohol duty) . Worst case people will go up north and the gov will lose both duty and VAT.
You know, I actually texted someone after I posted this and promised that You, Cian, would be the first responder.
Populist applies, as they will be using the backtrack announcement as a high-octane good news spin
and you already knew that
Happy New Year Cian, regards to all there. Bet you all wish for the simpler time Young Kenny was still about.
BTW, I’ll be keeping ye busy this year. (￣﹃￣)
We’ll see if they backtrack.
I just don’t get your “Populist toying with the Old Reliables, for polling affect. ”
All they ever do is increase the duty on booze and smokes. Never reduce it. It is never popular when they tinker with duty.
e.g. No decreases in the last 10 years:
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/money_and_tax/tax/duties_and_vat/excise_duties.html
oh, and you didn’t address the “tax take” either.
Happy New Year to you Vanessa
are you drunk?
The fools will never learn , started the year off by attacking Sinn Fein policy’s on taxes and then lashed 100 per cent increases on alcohol, so we’re off to The 6 counties for our drink on this historic day
We’ll need a Rex Banner prohibition style police force to stop the cross border importation/homebrew poitin distilleries.
“Listen, rummy, I’m gonna say it plain and simple. Where’d you pinch the hooch? Is some blind tiger jerking suds on the side?”
Is there a Slab Murphys available in Newry?
Sure there is, if you like the taste of diesel
There are a few options to negate the government continuing to take the urine out of the “drinking class”
One of the more enjoyable ways of denying them the money to further our persecution is home brew.
I can think of 3 great Irish websites that will assist in the process of negating MPU regulations.
But I will not link them as it may be counterproductive.
The process is enjoyable, setup costs are minimal, and the reward of not feeding govt and big business is twofold.
From kit, with a few extra ingredients, a decent cider around 7% or 8% can be made for around 1 euro a litre.
I have a 50lt fermentasaurus, 4 week max process, which is not hard work.
IPA, stout, bitter, lager can all be done around the 1 euro a litre price point from available standard kits.
Starve the beast.