The decision to defer health labelling on alcoholic drinks has all of the hallmarks of industry lobbying taking precedence over public health concerns, according to Social Democrats Enterprise spokesperson Sin\u00e9ad Gibney.<\/p>\n
Deputy Gibney said:<\/p>\n
\u201cThis government had committed to introducing health labelling on alcoholic drinks next year – but that promise has now been broken.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis decision is particularly difficult to understand given Fine Gael and Fianna F\u00e1il have claimed they are in favour of this measure – and it has universal support in the medical community.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am particularly struck that Miche\u00e1l Martin is Taoiseach as this retrograde decision is taken, given a key part of his political legacy was the introduction of the smoking ban in Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the opportunity now to introduce another far-reaching and meaningful public health reform, the Taoiseach – and this government – have bottled it.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly 38 per cent of people in Ireland are aware of the link between alcohol and cancer yet the government has deferred a measure that would address this information vacuum.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn attempting to justify this decision, the government has attempted to link it to tariffs, but this doesn\u2019t stand up to scrutiny. This is about alcohol labelling in this country – it doesn\u2019t impact our exports.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach year in Ireland there are approximately 1,000 alcohol-related cancer cases, so this is a hugely important issue. This decision has all of the hallmarks of industry lobbying taking precedence over public health concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n
July 16th, 2025<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The decision to defer health labelling on alcoholic drinks has all of the hallmarks of industry lobbying taking precedence over public health concerns, according to Social Democrats Enterprise spokesperson Sin\u00e9ad Gibney. Deputy Gibney said: \u201cThis government had committed to introducing health labelling on alcoholic drinks next year – but that promise has now been broken. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11661,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7,497],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-press-release","category-sinead-gibney"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n