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Article – Tom Doorley’s column ‘New wine labels will mean fewer great wines’ (17 June 2025)
The proposed delay in the implementation of alcohol labelling clearly highlights that, for our Government, commercial interests remain a priority over the public’s health and of the sustainability of our healthcare system.
As public health doctors, we were proud the day the Minister for Health signed into law the world’s most comprehensive alcohol labelling regulations. Our Government was being lauded internationally for decisive and positive action in ‘putting public health first’. Once again, Ireland was forging the way in prevention and pioneering measures to tackle this insidious public health issue that has long adversely impacted the health of our population and where harms are increasing.1,2
Comprehensive health labelling is designed to help consumers better understand the health-related risks of alcohol consumption and enable them to make informed decisions regarding their own consumption. It is by no means a silver bullet, but it is an essential component of a comprehensive strategy to reduce alcohol-related harms. As was demonstrated with cigarette warning labelling, improving consumers’ awareness of the health-related risks empowers them to make healthier choices,3 and as part of a comprehensive approach, significantly reduces consumption and improves health.4
However, it seems that enabling people to make healthier choices is not as important as enabling an industry to make profits, no matter the cost. The mere threat of tariffs was enough to overshadow the real adverse impacts of harmful alcohol use for our population. In an opinion piece in this publication, Tom Doorley accused the Government of a “lack of joined-up thinking” over the planned enactment of the regulation. In fact, it is delaying the introduction of labelling that reveals the lack of cohesion and foresight much more starkly. At a time when acute hospitals are overcrowded, waiting lists for acute and community mental health services are ever increasing, and health inequalities are widening in our society, more than 10 per cent of all public healthcare expenditure5 is due to alcohol consumption. And yet, the threat of an uncertain trading environment was enough to delay the implementation of an evidence-based policy to reduce alcohol consumption and the more than 200 diseases and illnesses the World Health Organisation identifies as causally associated with it.
Alcohol consumption per capita remains unacceptably high in Ireland, twice as high as in the middle of the last century, and according to Health Research Board research more than half of those who drink are classified as hazardous drinkers due to binge drinking patterns. The resulting burden of disease across mental health and addiction, cancers and cardiovascular disease, and accidents and trauma is staggering on a population level and can be devastating at an individual level.
The Government must stand strong and must act now. This is just one step in the long road we face in tackling this critical public health issue, but if we don’t start by placing the health of our population ahead of the profit of an industry, we will never win the race.
Sincerely,
The Irish Society of Specialists in Public Health Medicine
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