Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae is warning that the Government can’t look to tighten regulations every time there is a new video on social media.
Cabinet is today considering new regulations banning people from drinking take-away pints outdoors.
It comes after images of people drinking on the street in Dublin and Cork were shared on social media over the weekend.
On The Pat Kenny Show this morning, Deputy Healy-Rae welcomed the fact that the Health Minister appears to have dropped his original plan to ban the sale of take-away pints altogether.
“I would warmly welcome what I would call the rowing back from the knee-jerk reaction to what the Minister for Health was proposing to bring before Cabinet whereby the suggestion was going to be to stop the sale of take-away drinks completely,” he said.
Over-reaction
He said the condemns the images of groups drinking together on Saturday night but noted that there is “no point in over-reacting.”
“We can’t legislate every time there is a gathering of people or people do something wrong,” he said.
“We can’t come along and say, ‘now we will have a meeting of the Cabinet and we’ll bring in new legislation to deal with this type of a situation.’
“I would rather see the Taoiseach, the Minister for Health and people we want to work with coming out and saying to people that engaged in that type of activity last weekend: “Please don’t do this again.
“’You could be affecting your own grandparents, your own parents, people who are ill already, who have underlying illnesses.’ We have to plead with people to act responsibly.
“I would say, yes, if you want to get a takeaway drink, do it, buy your drink, drink your alcohol but do it responsibly please.”
He said people all around the country are getting tired of COVID-19 regulations – but noted the vast majority are following them and just need the encouragement to “just go the final step.”
Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae outside the Dáil, 04-04-2016. Image: RollingNewsPublican groups have insisted that the best way house parties and outdoor drinking is to reopen pubs so people can socialise in controlled environments – and Deputy Healy-Rae said Government must remember that publicans are “highly respectable.”
“When the pubs were allowed to open, they acted very responsibly,” he said.
“Remember when NPHET were engaged in contact tracing? The one thing they tried several times when they were questioning people, the question was, ‘have you frequented a public house recently Have you been in a restaurant recently?
“Our excellent Restaurant’s Association, their chairman will tell you that, in no way, could contact tracing get back to a situation and say it was our pubs or our restaurants or those types of engagements that led to the spike in cases.”
Responsibility
He said it is important to remember that there nothing wrong with having a drink.
“I want to knock one thing on the head,” he said.
“There seems to be this attitude in Ireland at the moment where it is as if you are doing something wrong if you are drinking.
“People have drank, they are drinking and they will drink. There is nothing wrong with that provided they do so in a responsible and safe manner.”
Toilets
On Sunday morning, Grogan’s pub in Dublin said it was left in a ‘disgraceful state’ after Saturday night with “tons of rubbish and people using it as a toilet.”
Deputy Healy-Rae said going to the toilet on someone else’s property in public is “wrong and it is just highly irresponsible.”
the Department of Health, NPHET; they can all do an awful lot of things – but when it comes to where a person will go to the toilet, the only answer I can give you to that is every person has the brains that God gave them.
I would hope that when people consume anything – whether it is food or whether it is alcohol, whatever they do, I would certainly hope they would be respectful and thoughtful when it comes to going to the toilet.
You can listen back here:
