Adults who preach about young people drinking too much should examine their own drinking habits first, an addiction researcher said at the weekend.Dr Shane Butler, of the Addiction Studies Centre in Trinity College, said children were drinking more "because we all are".
"It is quite hypocritical for adult society to preach about children's drinking when their own habits are no great shakes."
Dr Butler was speaking at a parents' seminar on young people and alcohol, run by Barnardos.
Ms Ann Conroy, head of the charity's National Children's Resource Centre, said over half of Ireland's young people began drinking before the age of 12 "and half of girls and two-thirds of boys in the 15 to 16 age group binge-drink".
Dr Butler said it was normal for children to want to do things that have "the badge of adulthood".
In Ireland, he went on, heavy drinking had, over the past 10 to 15 years, become "normalised". "Everything in advertising over the past decade has been about promoting alcohol, with very little alongside it concerning the risks to all consumers.
"And so we have to look at the way drinking by us all has changed. Between 1989 and 1999 there was a 41 per cent increase in alcohol consumption, at a time when in a lot of other EU countries it was going down. We are now at the top of the EU table," he said. "We have become a nation of serious drinkers."
Peer pressure, he said, "doesn't actually explain anything".
"It is true that young people are influenced by peer groups, but we all are and there is no evidence that peer pressure has a significant part to play.
"There is not a scrap of evidence that it has anything to do with low self-esteem," he went on, adding that children with healthy self-esteem were as likely to drink as those with a low sense of self-worth.
"A lack of healthy alternatives is not true. There are probably more alternatives today, in sport and media, than there ever were before.
"The most plausible explanation as to why young people are drinking more is that we all are."
He also said education about alcohol in schools was "worthless" and had little or no effect on young people's attitudes.
He questioned the workability of a national age card as a means of controlling young people's access to alcohol. "It would be very hard to enforce. There will always be some publicans who are conscientious and some who aren't."
There had been more "sustained discussion and debate" about alcohol in the past 12 months, he said, than in the past 30 years of his career.
"But it is worth noting that nothing has actually happened as a result. We hear heads of a Bill have been drafted, but don't hold your breath for new legislation."
Ms Margaret Acton, a parenting trainer with Barnardos, said parents needed to reflect on their own behaviour and also avoid being either "too strict" or "too permissive".
Although outlining approaches parents should take in areas of discipline, communication, dealing with conflict and getting along with adolescents, Ms Acton said it was "unfair" to expect that parents alone could solve the problem of underage drinking.
Dr Butler said parents were voters who had political clout.
Warning that they may be viewed as prohibitionist in seeking restrictions on access for young people to alcohol, he said parents should not be swayed.
"One of the reasons we didn't drink as much in the past is that we didn't have as much disposable income. That has affected how we drink. Maybe, as our society changes, we must manage alcohol in a different way."
