merrion street

Minister of State Róisín Shortall TD today (Tuesday 3rd July, 2012) was strongly critical of the Centra "Children’s Allowance Specials" promotion which included alcohol at discount prices.

"It is deeply disturbing that a retailer would promote alcohol in this way. Alcohol causes almost 90 deaths every month, is responsible for a quarter of injuries presenting to our emergency departments and is a trigger in one third of domestic abuse cases".

While acknowledging that Centra had instructed its stores to withdraw the promotion, Minister Shortall added "we need to tackle our patterns of alcohol consumption and the harms that alcohol is responsible for. Alcohol marketing and promotions are clearly part of this and the Centra promotion illustrates the weakness of a voluntary code in this area. My Department is developing an Action Plan on Alcohol based on the recommendations of the Substance Misuse Strategy and will be brought to Government in the coming weeks. We cannot tolerate similar alcohol promotions in the future."