What is it about the Licensed Vintners that they can get the Government to stand smartly to attention, click its heels, and do exactly what they want? What mesmeric power have they that everyone else lacks - even, be it said, the bright sparks who inhabit that intellectual nuclear power station that is Dail Eireann? How are the vintners the only people who invariably get their way on any issue that might involve several interest groups with different ambitions?
The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Equality and Women's Rights - and no finer body exists in the land, ma'am - spent an entire year compiling a report on the licensing laws. That the report was barely on the windward side of certifiably cretinous is neither here nor there; it was an Oireachtas Committee, and its deliberations were of more than passing interest to the Minister. But what does that fine fellow do but implement the proposals suggested in reply by the vintners?
Good Friday
Now it is true that recommendations from the Joint Committee on Justice, Equality and Women's Rights To Get Plastered And Get Laid reeked of the fat-headedness one expects from those who enter public life solely for the purposes of imposing their will on the rest of us. On the total Good Friday ban on alcohol sales the Committee reported: "We are satisfied that there is no significant groundswell of opinion which is in favour of changing the position and we recommend its retention for the present." Which can only lead us to suppose that the committee confined its research on this issue to the ranks of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy or conducted its enquiries on Jupiter. Virtually no-one in this Republic says that Good Friday closing is a relevant and laudable interference by the State in the private habits of individuals. That the law actually makes it a criminal offence even for people to be served with wine while eating in the dining-room of their hotel is almost laughably preposterous - except, of course, it is not remotely laughable. It is a sharp reminder of the authoritarian instincts which were rampant when John Charles and his crew ran the ship.
News for the lads and lasses of the Joint Committee on Justice, Equality and Women's Rights To Buy The Next Round And Mine's A Pint: them days is over. But of course, they're not over in their minds - for what else did they enter public life for but to tinker with our lives here, and mess with them there, but most of all, not let us live as we would like to? So it's hardly surprising that the JCJE&WR also stood by the blanket ban on pubs opening on Christmas Day, or that it wished to continue criminalising people who wished to buy a bottle of wine at 2.01 p.m. on a Sunday or on St Patrick's Day, but not 61 seconds earlier.
Authoritarianism
Look for rhyme or reason, logic or sense, in these proposals, and you look for a Latin Mass from Ian Paisley: what you have instead is the querulous authoritarianism of nannydom in its dotage. There is therefore no reason to expect from the august souls of the Joint Committee on Justice, Equality and Women's Rights To Have A Glass of Wine In A Pub On A Sunday Afternoon & Maybe Try To Get Off With That Big Zulu Over There that their recommendations on pub closing times contain any more common sense.
And they haven't let us down there. On pub closing times, the committee reported: "We have not seen any great evidence of a demand for later closing on Monday to Wednesday nights and even if we had, we would still harbour doubts about the wisdom of such a change." Ah. So, regardless of the popular will in these matters, the joint committee would prefer to be informed by its own ineffable wisdom? That same wisdom permitted the committee to suggest that for four days a week pubs should stop serving at 11.30 p.m. (with half an hour's gulping-up time) but, lo! from Wednesday to Saturday, the world is an entirely different place and pubs may serve until 12.30 a.m., again with half an hour's lurrying-up time, after which, whistle up the constabulary and hoosh the lot of them off to Devil's Island.
Circus seal
The vintners replied to this witlessness with a suggestion that throughout the week pubs should serve until 12.30, with half-an-hour's hoovering time; and what did Mr John O'Donoghue do but, like a circus seal performing a trick on demand, promptly obey the publicans. But of course he did. This is what governments are conjured into existence to do.
At no stage in any of these deliberations do we hear a word of the philosophy at work, perhaps because there isn't any. What there is, however, is the instinctual governessery of the political establishment and the almost commendably undisguised self-interest of the licensed trade. This latter has been repeatedly triumphant in matters of licensing laws, and it is triumphant yet again, denying us the continent-wide liberty of having a drink in a hostelry at any hour congenial to host and guest. Why should this State employ its majestic powers about such purposes?
Why? Because we let it.