Late night street violence, invariably connected with the excessive consumption of alcohol, has become a serious social problem in our society and is likely to figure as an election issue. What Dr Stephen Cusack, an accident and emergency consultant at Cork University Hospital, describes in the Weekend Review as "an epidemic of thuggery" is under way. He has linked the phenomenon with a huge increase in alcohol consumption in recent years.
The initial response of the Coalition Government was tentative and may have been conditioned by the political influence of the vintners' organisations. Following an extension of licensing hours two years ago, the Garda authorities in a number of towns and cities complained about an upsurge in the incidence of late-night public disorder. The Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, established "Operation Oíche" and allocated extra Garda to tackle the problem. This year the exercise was relaunched as "Operation Encounter". Yesterday, within weeks of a general election campaign, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr O'Donoghue, published details of a Criminal Justice (Public Order) Bill.
The Bill will allow the District Court to impose barring orders on individuals who are found guilty of public order offences. The Garda will be empowered to apply for closure orders, lasting from a number of hours to seven days, against clubs, pubs and food outlets where they fail to prevent disorder or deal with excessive noise. Commenting on the legislation, Mr O'Donoghue said it would strengthen the powers of the Garda in dealing with late night drunken hooliganism on urban streets. But it is unlikely to take effect until late this year, or early in 2003.
The terms of the Bill should be welcomed, but will it have any significant impact on the situation? After all, the law governing the sale of alcohol to minors is a sad joke because of a lack of enforcement. A voluntary age-card scheme, introduced in 1999, can only be described as a failure in the light of evidence of widespread binge-drinking by teenagers and a 50 per cent increase in alcohol addiction for those under 25 years in the past ten years.
The recent growth in Irish prosperity has also seen a massive rise in alcohol consumption. In the past decade, the State has moved from twelfth to second place in the world rankings and the Department of Health has recorded a 41 per cent increase in alcohol consumption. At the same time, we head the European league in the incidence of under-aged drinking. This legislation, if vigorously enforced, has the capacity to limit late night street disorder by targeting both disreputable publicans and violent young people.