Do what they say, not what they do. The Minister for Health, Micheal Martin, told Wednesday's News At One he was very, very worried about under-age drinking.
If you'd seen the picture of him in his First Communion suit published a while ago in this paper, you'd want to believe him. This is a good boy, who became a good man and is now a good politician. It's his good-politician side which may give reason for concern.
Under the social policies pursued by Mr Martin and his Government colleagues, the only way increasing numbers of citizens believe they can survive living in this State is by getting out of their heads as often as possible. Their response to this place and time is to become insensible whenever they can, as soon as they can get away with it.
Inflation? Have a drink. Housing crisis? Have another. How do you know when you're grown up? You drink your brother (or sister) under the table.
Mr Martin's worries are well founded: Irish teenagers are about to be shown as the highest illegal consumers of alcohol in Europe. He and his colleagues have made much noise about the action they have taken and are taking. But what they're actually doing is a different thing again.
This is the nation of "that Friday feeling". Brand Ireland is built on the twin peaks of money and drink. We may not know exactly who we are or where we're going, but when it comes to bonding, we can always do it if the wheels are greased.
The achievement of this Government in particular has been to replace the image of the shamrock with that of the pint. Nationalism is dead, but drink lives on. The picture Bertie Ahern showed the world when Bill Clinton came to Ireland involved a pint glass and a packed pub. They chose to host their business lunch in the Guinness Museum.
Fianna Fail describes itself as the Republican Party. It has also been called the publicans' party. The dance it weaves between the vintners' lobby and the price of the pint has made for many a useful headline when the political chips were down. Its consistent refusal to deregulate that industry enables vintners and publicans to maintain their business as a series of exclusive ivory towers which take the profits without being accountable for the damage their product can do.
Last summer, John O'Donoghue, Minister for Justice and son of a publican, extended late-night drinking hours, while threatening vintners with closure if they served drink to the under-aged. Two young men just above the legal drinking age were murdered within weeks, apparently by others on the way home from the pub.
Mr Martin failed to address comprehensively such issues when challenged about deregulation, and about restricting the role of sponsorship and advertising. Instead, he announced yet another education campaign targeting the young. If his campaign works in the way successive anti-smoking programmes have, the evidence suggests we can expect the number of under-age drinkers, and over-age alcohol abusers, to rise even further.
The Minister implies deregulation would create more access to alcohol and therefore lead to greater levels of abuse. As long as the price of a pint is kept in check, his Government will continue to treat vintners and publicans as a protected species. Meanwhile, he simultaneously alerts us to the dangers facing our children, while leaving us alone with the inevitable fallout.
In a culture where the best ads are for alcohol and where huge swaths of the media, sport and the arts rely on alcohol sponsorship and advertising, how can any young person not assume that drink is anything other than a benevolent force? How can any adult either?
And if the Minister for Health cannot be persuaded the situation is serious enough for him to recommend a radical package of controls and balances to his cabinet colleagues, what hope is there that individual parents can make up the gap?
AT A time when we're told we've never had it so good, the one agreed expression of Irishness is the prospect of a happy hour and another happy drink. The parent who dares to fly in the face of such imagery and such Government example is exemplary indeed.
And if the figures are correct, parents are drinking more, too. When Government indicates a lack of conviction about the scale of social change required, along with the leadership to manage it, parents are left unsupported. Branding Ireland as a place of drink and craic may not be unduly damaging to tourists who come for a wild weekend. Tourists can go back home, drink lots of water, and get their lives back on track.
The problem is when Irish citizens buy into it too. Beneath the images are the stirrings of a deep malaise about who we really are and where we really feel we're going. Drinking too much is about forgetting, not remembering. It is about dulling the senses.
The Minister and his colleagues tell us we've never had it so good: more money, more jobs, better lifestyle. If we've never had it better, why do we run from taking a sober look at Ireland 2001? The politics of That Friday Feeling may be more useful to Government than we think.