Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív has expressed serious concerns that the Minimum Pricing Provisions of the Public Health Alcohol Act 2018 have not been implemented.
This particular Bill took an extraordinary length of time to enact through the Houses of the Oireachtas and Dep O Cuiv sats it is now very disappointing that sometime after the Bill was enacted that the Minimum Pricing Provisions of this Act have not been implemented.
“In a Parliamentary Question at the end of December, the Minister gave a vague reply to a question I asked, as to when the Minimum Pricing Provisions of the Public Health Alcohol Act 2018 would be implemented.
“In his reply, the Minister said “‘t is necessary to seek a revised Government decision to implement minimum unit pricing of alcohol products as the original decision envisaged implementation simultaneously with Northern Ireland. I intend to seek that revised Decision early in 2019.”
“One would have thought with the long lead-in to the enactment of the Bill that everything would be in place immediately after its enactment to implement the Bill in full. A similar situation has arisen in relation to the labelling of products where I have been informed that the necessary permission from the European Commission has not yet been sought. Once again the Government are full of promises, but are completely failing on delivery on important issues,” said Dep O Cuiv.
