Alcohol Action Ireland

04/06/2026

As debates intensify globally around social media regulation and even bans for young people, the latest podcast from Institute Of Alcohol Studies with guest Prof Nicholas Carah discusses the fast-evolving world of digital alcohol marketing - and why it matters.

The widespread adoption of digital technologies and online social networks has revolutionised the way marketers engage with consumers, creating opportunities for corporate brands to target and engage with children and teenagers in unprecedented and unparalleled ways.

Digital alcohol marketing employs subtle tactics, including influencer marketing, sponsored content, and user-generated content, which effectively promotes drinking behaviours among young people. It allows alcohol companies to reach young people with tailored and engaging content, often through the exploitation of user data and preferences to create sophisticated, personalised marketing content.

There is a significant association between exposure to alcohol advertisements/content and drinking intentions, attitudes, and behaviours, particularly among children and adolescents. It is within this context that we must view the surge in youth drinking in Ireland in the last decade - from 66% in 2016 to 78% in 2025.

Every year approximately 50,000 children start drinking in Ireland. Starting to drink alcohol as a child, which is the norm rather than the exception in Ireland, is a known risk factor for later dependency.

Read AAI's report, Digital and social media marketing of alcohol, here ⬇️
https://alcoholireland.ie/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Digital-and-Social-Media-Marketing-of-Alcohol-Final-Draft.pdf

https://www.ias.org.uk/podcast/hooked-by-design-how-social-media-fuels-alcohol-harm/

On this month’s Alcohol Alert podcast, we spoke to Professor Nicholas Carah about the fast-evolving world of digital alcohol marketing - and why it matters. As debates intensify globally around social media regulation and even bans for young people, the conversation couldn’t be more timely. Prof...

02/06/2026

AAI is delighted to provide input into Department of Education and Youth Consultation on Wellbeing in Education in Ireland.

Alcohol consumption among children and young people is a particular public health concern for government and policy makers as it carries significant health risks. There are also major impacts on children from the drinking of others, particularly parents. One third of children in Ireland have a parent who either regularly binge drinks or is dependent on alcohol.

While drinking among children and young people declined from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s, since 2015 that downward trend has reversed with consumption by 15-24-year-olds increasing from 66% in 2018 to 78% in 2025. Given such high and rising consumption among young people, it is important the State uses schools as a critical intervention point.

AAI believes the updated Wellbeing Policy represents a critical opportunity to explicitly embed alcohol literacy, social norms approaches, and mental health connections within wellbeing and Social, Personal, and Health Education (SPHE). Furthermore, by ensuring teachers are adequately trained to address these issues, schools can play a meaningful role in reducing alcohol harm.

02/06/2026

"Let’s be clear. Early binge-drinking is a form of self-harm. Our failure to recognise it as such has clouded Ireland’s approach to alcohol control, contributing to weak enforcement of existing laws and a reluctance to implement measures that would steer children towards healthier activities....

"... We are not short of data. What we lack is decisive action."

Former Medical Council President Suzanne Crowe writes in today's TheJournal.ie how young people's developing brain is particularly vulnerable to alcohol’s psychological effects and how early alcohol use is associated with later substance use, poorer mental health and death in tragic circumstances.

Ireland's su***de prevention strategies, mental health services and public education campaigns must speak with one voice: early alcohol use is not harmless experimentation. It is high-risk behaviour with potentially lifelong consequences.

As exam season starts, the reality is that soon, hospitals will start to see the devastating consequences of teenage binge-drinking.

29/05/2026

Friday, May 22, should have marked a proud moment for public health in Ireland, with the introduction of regulations ensuring all alcohol products would have to carry labels giving health information. However, the Government capitulated to the intensive lobbying of the alcohol industry. Ireland’s regulations, which would have been a world-wide first, have now been delayed until September 2028, and remain under threat.

In the wake of the delay a year ago, Social Democrats spokesperson on enterprise and a TD for Dublin Rathdown, Sinéad Gibney, spoke about her own personal experience with alcohol and how the negative impacts of alcohol have played a huge part in her life.

In her guest blog for AAI, deputy Gibney marks ‘labelling day’ by outlining how almost 3,000 lives will have been lost to alcohol by the time the revised introduction date arrives and how the labelling fiasco has seen Ireland go from world leader to bystander.

READ MORE ⬇️

Guest blog by Sinéad Gibney TD Forty years ago this month, the then Minister for Health Barry Desmond put his signature to a regulation requiring health warnings on cigarette packets. Despite all the available evidence supporting his decision, the move was opposed, delayed, and derided by an indust...

28/05/2026

Government yesterday published Ireland’s Strategy to Reduce Su***de and Self-harm, Connecting for Life 2026–2035.

Alcohol is no ordinary commodity; it is a depressant drug with significant health implications for those who use it, and it is a significant risk factor for su***de.

AAI is pleased to see alcohol included as a commercial determinant of health. This was an issue raised by AAI and others in submissions.

Reducing Ireland’s overall alcohol consumption and addressing our high levels of binge drinking will be important factors in working to reduce su***de and self harm. However we also know that vested interests constantly act against any initiatives to address these factors.

A concerted whole-of-government approach is needed to address these commercial determinants of health.

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27/05/2026

AAI welcomes tomorrow’s Second Stage introduction of the Public Health (Alcohol) (Amendment) Bill 2025 in Dáil Éireann by Pádraig Rice TD (Social Democrats) but is disappointed to note the government’s intention to oppose it.

This Bill is not about the nature of zero-alcohol products, it is about protecting children from exposure to alcohol advertising by proxy. Zero-alcohol products are not being aggressively advertised because the alcohol industry wants people to drink less. They are being pushed for three reasons: to increase main brand alcohol sales, to challenge the market share of soft drinks, and to sidestep child protection measures on where the industry can advertise their brands. Even the industry admits this in industry-facing publications.

Not long ago vapes were being touted by the to***co industry as a smoking cessation product and we now have an epidemic of children va**ng. Similarly, the alcohol industry likes to portray zero-alcohol products as a means of moderation and yet we now have a situation where youth drinking in Ireland has surged from 66% to 78% in the last decade.

The Public Health (Alcohol) Act 2018 (PHAA) is based on the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) including controls on pricing and marketing, and is strongly supported by AAI.

This important legislation has brought about some success in helping to reduce Ireland’s alcohol consumption – down 18% since its passage. However, restrictions on the amount of alcohol marketing that children see are being subverted by tagging on a 0.0 to the alcohol brand.

The PHAA was designed to protect children and we need to start looking at zero-alcohol advertising through their eyes – the 0.0 makes 0.0 difference to them. The current legislation is not working to protect children and young people from pervasive advertising and marketing of alcohol. This needs to change and this Bill is another step in that process.

READ MORE ⬇️

Alcohol Action Ireland press release, Wednesday, 27 May 2026 Alcohol Action Ireland (AAI), the national independent advocate to reduce alcohol harm, welcomes tomorrow’s Second Stage introduction of the Public Health (Alcohol) (Amendment) Bill 2025 in Dáil Éireann by Pádraig Rice TD (Social Demo...

22/05/2026

Liver specialists Dr Stephanie Rutledge and AAI chairperson Prof Frank Murray write in The Lancet how the delay in the introduction of alcohol health warning labelling in Ireland - which should have been implemented today but has been delayed until September 2028 due to intense industry lobbying - exemplifies scandalous and harmful interference by the alcohol industry in public health policy.

Alcohol is the most common cause of cirrhosis, deaths due to liver disease, and liver transplantation in Europe, and an enormous economic burden to society and the taxpayer.

Labelling is one of World Health Organization's core strategies to reduce alcohol harms and is a low-cost, high-impact intervention that has the potential to mitigate harmful alcohol use on a large scale.

The failure to introduce alcohol health-warning labelling reflects a victory for the alcohol industry. Like the to***co industry, the alcohol industry should be excluded from public health policy formation.

READ MORE ⬇️

May 22, 2026, marks a disappointing day for those attempting to implement evidence-based alcohol public health policy. This is the date when Ireland's new alcohol labelling regulations, part of the Public Health (Alcohol) Act 2018, were due to be implemented.1 These regulations had been signed into....

22/05/2026

AAI CEO Sheila Gilheany writes in today's Irish Examiner how today should have marked a proud moment for public health in Ireland, with the introduction of regulations ensuring all alcohol products would have to carry labels giving health information, including facts on cancer, liver disease, and pregnancy.

However, the Government capitulated to the intensive lobbying of the alcohol industry. Ireland’s regulations, which would have been a world-wide first, have now been delayed until September 2028, and remain under threat.

For well over a decade, since labelling was first proposed, the alcohol industry has fought against it at national and international levels in an exceptionally well-co-ordinated attack, using many of the ploys of the to***co industry, which was equally opposed to the labelling of its products.

Beyond the immediate issue that consumers are being kept in the dark on alcohol risks, it also raises questions about how Government reaches decisions when the demands of a health-harming industry are given precedence over settled health policy. How have we arrived at a point when an industry which makes a toxic, carcinogenic product is able to conceal these facts from consumers?

READ MORE ⬇️

More than half of all deaths in Ireland are caused by four industries — alcohol, to***co, fossil fuels, and unhealthy foods, all of which resist public health measures

14/05/2026

AAI CEO Sheila Gilheany yesterday outlined some of the 'shocking numbers' around alcohol's impact on road safety to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport.

* Alcohol is involved in over a third of driver deaths on our roads.
* Almost one in eight drivers (12%) admit to drink driving in the past 12 months - that’s around 424,500 people a year, or 1,160 a day, taking a lethal weapon onto our roads after drinking. This is up from 9% in 2021.
* In 2021 just 18 breath tests per 1,000 inhabitants were carried out here. In France that figure was 109 and the league was topped by Estonia with a rate of 576 tests.
* Three in four people deem it ‘unlikely’ or ‘very unlikely’ to be breath tested on a typical journey.

AAI is calling on government to set breath test targets and ensure resources are made available to reach them.

In Australia, for example, there is a target that every licensed driver should expect to be tested once annually. In Australia the level of driver fatalities with a positive alcohol toxicology is 14% compared with 35% in Ireland.

Government must call time on drink driving.
Jim O'Callaghan TD

13/05/2026

Alcohol is involved in over a third of driver deaths on our roads. Almost one in eight drivers (12pc) admit to drink driving in the past 12 months.

That’s around 424,500 people a year, or 1,160 a day, taking a lethal weapon on to our roads after drinking, and the percentage of people admitting to drink driving is rising, up from 9pc in 2021.

Three in four people deem it ‘unlikely’ or ‘very unlikely’ to be breath-tested on a typical journey – and they are right. Ireland has the lowest level of roadside breath testing in the EU. In 2021 just 18 tests per 1,000 inhabitants were carried out here. In France that figure was 109 and the league was topped by Estonia with a rate of 576 tests.

READ MORE ⬇️

The number of breath tests being carried out on Irish roads has plummeted, despite the number of drivers increasing by nearly one million.