Sir, – I read with interest your article on alcohol warning labels for consumers (“‘I will lose 30% of the beers in my fridge, the same with wine and spirits’: traders voice fears over alcohol health-warning labels”, Drink, February 16th).
Alcohol health warning labels will have beneficial implications for Irish consumers.
Alcohol is an undeniable and enormous cause of illness, death and other harms.
It is truly shocking to realise that alcohol causes approximately 800,000 deaths each year in Europe, causing 5 per cent of all deaths, and 7 per cent of all deaths in men. Alcohol-related deaths are premature, and more than half of these alcohol-attributable deaths occur in people less than 60 years of age. The average lifespan of those who consume alcohol in Ireland is reduced by about two years. Many of these patients and their families are unaware that alcohol caused their cancer and heart or cardiovascular illness or death.
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Alcohol is also the commonest cause of death due to liver disease.
Alcohol is harmful to the foetus, particularly causing foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which at its core is a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition. There is no safe level of alcohol consumption during pregnancy.
Research evidence demonstrates that most people are unaware of many of the risks of alcohol consumption.
Given the extensive harms of alcohol and lack of public awareness, it is astonishing that alcohol products have avoided being required to carry health warning labels up to this time. World Health Organisation Europe has prioritised alcohol health warning labels as a measure to reduce alcohol harms. Alcohol health warning labels will empower individuals to make a more informed choice about what they consume or not.
Ireland will be the first country in the EU to introduce mandatory cancer warning labels on alcoholic beverages. These warnings reflect the undeniable fact that alcohol causes cancer. Ireland was the first country to ban smoking in all workplaces, bars and restaurants in 2004, under Micheál Martin. This initiative has been copied extensively internationally. I believe that many other jurisdictions will follow Ireland’s example, and introduce cancer and other alcohol health warning labels.
The alcohol industry has had plenty of time to prepare for these warning labels, since the passage of the Public Health Alcohol Act in 2018. The industry is well able to prepare labels quickly and efficiently to promote their harmful products. Now they need to prepare labels to inform citizens of the proven serious and life-threatening risks of alcohol, as well as basic nutritional information required on other food and beverage products. This is long overdue. I hope and believe that they will be required to use alcohol health warning labels in many other countries soon, following Ireland’s lead. This may make the issues that the industry complains about easier to standardise internationally. – Yours, etc,
Prof FRANK MURRAY, MD
(Past President,
Royal College of Physicians of Ireland),
Chair,
Alcohol Action Ireland,
Dublin 7.
Defending Europe
Sir, – Fintan Lane is entirely correct in asserting that “militarism rooted in despair cannot be allowed to shape the future of Europe” (Letters, February 18th). However, prudent defence and security preparations rooted in the harsh reality of Russian actions and apparent intent, as well as the effective withdrawal of US security guarantees, are a different matter. They are the least that citizens of Europe should expect from their governments, separately or, ideally, in co-ordination. The future shape of Europe will depend on how it reacts to current and likely future geopolitical realities created by two superpowers. Neither moralising about the obscenity of defence expenditure, nor declarations of neutrality, will change those realities. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL O’DWYER,
Clogheen,
Cork.
Sir, – Further to “Ireland could give Ukraine €50 million in non-lethal military support, Cabinet to hear” (News, February 18th), when the history of the war in Ukraine is written, it will record that, despite repeated pleas from the Ukrainian government, Ireland refused to give the Ukrainians what they most needed: weapons. Many Irish people will comfort themselves, no doubt, that whatever the outcome, our national sense of self righteousness was intact. – Yours, etc,
PAUL WILLIAMS,
Kilkee,
Co Clare.
Sir, – Would the US not be better charging Russia, the aggressors, rather than asset-stripping Ukraine, the victim, for support provided during the past three years? – Yours, etc,
JOHN SHEERAN,
Drogheda,
Co Louth.
Build-to-rent’s positive role
Sir, – In a recent column in The Irish Times, Newton Emerson made the case for the positive role build-to-rent can play in the housing market here (“Moral panic about build-to-rent apartments overlooks their obvious advantages”, Opinion & Analysis, February 13th). He also noted that Belfast City Council, where Sinn Féin chairs the planning committee, is happy to approve build-to-rent projects, as has People Before Profit. This is in stark contrast with both parties’ positioning on the subject here in the Republic, and the irony will I am sure not be lost on your readers.
In a letter (February 15th), Lorcan Sirr takes issue with Newton Emerson’s article and calls into question its central premise. Yet as recently as last November, your editorial noted: “Outside Dublin, a severe lack of new rental properties led to a double-digit growth in rentals in many areas last year, with some moderation now to 8.9 per cent. In Dublin, there was a more modest 2.6 per cent rise in 2023, but this has now doubled to an annual rate of increase of 5.2 per cent” (“The Irish Times view on the Irish rental market: a key part of any housing solution”, November 13th, 2024).
The marked moderation of rental price inflation in Dublin in 2023 is, I would contend, directly linked to the significant amount of new supply, including build to rent, which institutional investors facilitated in the Dublin region in 2023. Rental prices began to climb again in 2024 in tandem with a marked reduction in new supply as the impact of the 2 per cent rent cap continued to bite, resulting in institutional investment drying up and delivery of associated new stock slowly grinding to a halt. – Yours, etc,
PAT FARRELL,
CEO,
Irish Institutional Property,
Dublin 2.
Copper landlines prove their worth
Sir, – Right in the middle of the extensive power cut caused by Storm Éowyn in rural county Galway, many of my friends and neighbours were driving 10km to the nearest town in order to find both mobile phone signal and a power socket to charge said phone.
Meanwhile, I was enjoying many phone conversations with my family in France right from the comfort of my own home (or lack thereof, since we had no heating or water, but that is a story for another time).
The difference? My husband and I own a copper landline, one of these old-fashioned things that work without electricity (or internet) at the customer’s end, and is therefore more likely and able to sustain the effects of extreme weather. In fact, it has rarely let us down so far, despite the many storms we’ve had.
However, governments all over the world, including that of Ireland, want to do away with these reliable means of communication in favour of their digital counterparts, which require both electricity and internet to work.
How sustainable can that be possibly be, in a storm-battered country where many, including us, are still waiting for their internet connection to be restored over three weeks after the weather event that took it away?
I certainly hope Storm Éowyn will encourage the powers that be to reflect on their own technological choices, and to not turn their nose up at old technologies that still work during power cuts. The cost of maintaining them cannot be more than that of repairing whole other networks after storms. – Yours, etc,
MELANIE BOUFFARD JONES,
Kinvara,
Co Galway.
Rugby substitutions
Sir, – Further to the letter on rugby substitutions (February 17th), rugby does not begin and end with professional rugby. The professional game cannot exist without the amateur clubs and players who in their thousands turn out every weekend.
Substitutes enable small clubs to give as many players the opportunity to get on the field of play and, in my long experience of club rugby, this what most clubs do.
It should be remembered that the IRFU is there to look after the game as a whole and inclusive of all who take part in the best game played on grass.
When rules are changed the first consideration should given to all who actually play the game and not to the needs of television and the armchair supporters.
As for the idea that removing substitutes would create a fast and expansive game, I’m sure there are many good rugby people still around who remember the days before substitutes when mud-covered players would give their all for a 3-0 victory.
It’s better now but it was mighty then too. – Yours, etc,
JOHN HOLSTEAD,
Ventry,
Co Kerry.
Between a rock and a hard place
Sir, – I enjoyed reading “‘If the asteroid hits Dublin, everything is gone’: A chastened Kieran Cuddihy hears about the end of the world” (Mick Heaney, Radio Review, February 14th). Far from leaving me worried about the potential of an asteroid strike, it brought back pleasant memories of the early 1980s growing up in Bray, Co Wicklow, where Asteroids was one of the video games in the amusement arcades that I enjoyed playing. There was both an upright cabinet version and a cocktail cabinet version in one arcade at the south end of the promenade. This was the golden age of arcade games, just before the first home computers. For 10 pence, you got to be the controller of a spaceship in an asteroid field, shooting asteroids and flying saucers while trying to avoid being hit by them. Chances are that by 2032, when there is a 2.2 percent chance of Earth being hit, Elon Musk will have come up with a real-life version of the game. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN QUIGLEY,
Dublin 9.
Keeping the home fires burning
Sir, – Reading Ita O’Kelly’s Irishwoman’s Diary (February 18th) on the delicate art of getting the fire going, one of the tricks in our house was to hold a full two-page newspaper sheet across the front of the fireplace to cause a draught that would accelerate the flame. This worked well, but always ended in the paper bursting into flames and disappearing up the chimney, to the great joy and excitement of us watching children. – Yours, etc,
CHRISTOPHER KAVANAGH,
Donaghmede,
Dublin 13.
Children’s hospital delay
Sir, – It seems the opening of the new national children’s hospital will be delayed because the move can’t take place during the winter months of “November to March” because of the associated increased clinical risks (News, February 18th). Having waited this long, this is the right decision for patient safety. Let’s hope, however, the effects of global warming won’t pose further delays during the summer months of April to October! – Yours, etc,
CHRIS FITZPATRICK,
Dublin 6.
Loud and clear in Sligo
Sir, – I wanted to shout this from the rooftops, but as I am in my 83rd year, that is not an option, and I am writing to you instead. Last Thursday (February 13th), the Irish National Opera came to the Hawk’s Well Theatre in Sligo for the first time in about two years with their production of Die Fledermaus. The theatre was packed and the performance truly merited the standing ovation it was given by an enchanted audience. I hope that we will have many more such magnificent performances by such talented singers in the coming years. – Yours, etc,
TRUDY LOMAX,
Cliffoney,
Co Sligo.
There’s no place quite like Cork
Sir, – Patsy McGarry’s In a Word (February 17th) tells us that Cork people were the least likely in Ireland to leave their county. This could explain why Corkonians get homesick in Cork. – Yours, etc,
TONY WOOL,
Ballincollig,
Cork.
