Alcohol misuse causes more damage than poverty, violent crime, unemployment, all the cancers, and all the other drug addictions combined in this society.

One person dies every seven hours from an alcohol-related illness. One-in-three road deaths is alcohol-related and one-in-four admissions to hospital emergency departments is alcohol-related. More relationships fail because of alcohol misuse than any other issue. More businesses are lost and careers ruined because of the astonishing grip that drink has on so many of us. Our international image is damaged, too often with our ill-judged compliance, by our inability to create or sustain a beneficial relationship with drink.

If described in monetary terms, the statistics defining the crisis are staggering. One estimate suggests that alcohol-related issues cost this economy €3.7bn a year. To put that in context last week’s budget took €3.5bn out of our economy. Apart at all from the tragic human cost, these figures are daunting and must be confronted despite our long-term reluctance to do so.

This week the Irish Examiner reported that the long-overdue national alcohol strategy has been deferred until next year despite promises it would be finalised before Christmas. Though very disappointing this evasion cannot be described as surprising. It is just the latest in a long line of failures to take a strong position on alcohol abuse in Ireland.

Like the tobacco industry before it, the drinks industry is fighting a dogged rearguard action. Though not in any way as powerful as it once was, any force as powerful as the drinks industry has the capacity to intimidate legislators and, like the tobacco industry did, delay if not stymie controlling legislation....