A sour taste of cafe bar drinking culture

Radio Review: It's a Foxrock solution to a Listowel problem, said Billy Keane, weighing into the great café bar debate on The Last Word with Matt Cooper (Today FM, Wednesday). He now runs his late father John B Keane's bar in Kerry, one of the most famous bars in the country, and he's clear where food fits in to the whole drinking equation.

"Really, you should have your dinner at home, throw on a few spuds, meat and bit of cabbage and then come to the pub," said the one-time solicitor, now turned novelist and publican, who at a push might muster up a toasted sandwich if some soakage was urgently required. As for the café part of the deal, don't sidle up to Keane's bar with your big Dublin head on you and order a skinny decaf mocha. Keane's a fan of throwing a couple of spoons of instant in a cup, because "there's too much cleaning on those coffee machines".

Pubs are for "atmosphere" and that favourite Irish euphemism, "craic", and, in Keane's mind, Michael McDowell, in extending licences to restaurants, is just being "vindictive". The Licensed Vintners' Association has presented a polished public response to the café bar proposals - at least on air - but this was a beyond-the-Pale insight into what some publicans really think.

Cooper refrained from reading out listeners' texts until Keane had left the studio, a kindness given that the words "dinosaur" and "muck savage" were thrown about, with one texter accusing the programme of trying to pass off D'Unbelievable comedian Pat Shortt as a country publican. Amid all the blather, the Kerry man did make the point that the Minster's reform of the licensing laws are just a smokescreen and wouldn't deal with binge drinking in any meaningful way. What was needed, he said, was more police on the streets, "not a police state but a policed state".

Seán O'Rourke on News at One (RTÉ Radio 1, Monday) suggested to Michael McDowell that his rethink of his original plan for café bars was a classic case of "hauling down the flag and declaring victory". The Minister wasn't having any of it.

"I've decided in response [ to the objections] to go down the more radical route," he said of his proposal to licence restaurants to serve all forms of alcohol. His pint 'n' pizza vision of the future is designed to deal with "youngsters drinking six or seven pints with little more than a packet of nuts". No mention in all of this as to why Irish youngsters are drinking six or seven pints in the first place. And no talk of broader societal strategies, other than to make more drink available in more places.

The why and the what to do are the focus of The Family Meeting (RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday), a new series on parenting presented by Dr Tony Humphreys, one of Ireland's best-known clinical psychologists. Parenting programmes are all the rage on TV, where tips on toddler-taming from scary looking nannies have moved from daytime slots into prime time. On screen, there's the drama of seeing a toddler lying on the supermarket floor and the desperation in the eyes of exhausted parents, something that Humphreys can't deliver on radio, but his programme is starting out as an interesting experiment.

This week's first part introduced two families who, over the next six weeks, are going to try to put Humphreys's parenting advice into practice. The Grogans' three small children sounded sweet and manageable, although the parents admitted they would welcome help and direction. The six kids ranging in age from five to 17 in the Nevin-Maguire household were refreshingly honest in their appraisal of each other: "She's too bossy"; "I hate him"; "I don't know her"; "I can't stand her" - that sort of real-life, but seldom-aired sibling stuff. Humphreys's advice to parents is to first know yourself, know your children and ensure your children know you.

In RTÉ's particularly packed summer evening schedule, Touching the Glass (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday) kicked off a five-part exploration of the senses by looking at taste. An archive clip from 1958 featured the first celebrity chef, Fanny Craddock, giving advice to restaurateurs at a conference in Shannon. Don't, she said, be so concerned with how your restaurants look.

"You can't eat the curtains; far more important to put the quality into the food," she said in her fantastically plummy voice.What to do with a gang of young ones monopolising the best table in the restaurant for the whole night, downing vat-fulls of alcopops while sharing a starter is another matter altogether.