I naturally support the Bill also. I may perhaps be allowed to say a word or two about the building itself and to speak about matters that occur to me arising from the speech by the Minister of State.
What the Minister and Deputy Woods said about the National Concert Hall is very much to be emphasised. I remember, in the Coalition Government from 1973-77, the controversy which was then raging as to whether the Government should go ahead with the extremely expensive original idea for a John F. Kennedy Hall or whether they should adopt a much more economical alternative even if, as it then seemed, a rather makeshift one, of converting the old UCD premises at Earlsfort Terrace. Richie Ryan, who is now rightly coming into his own, impressed on the Government the importance of not throwing away money on a project which, if any recent experience was to be a guide, would undoubtedly by the end have cost three times more than the original quotation. He advised they should concentrate instead on the somewhat more modest, even if not absolutely perfect, project of converting the old Great Hall in UCD. I agreed with the financial and economic sense of that decision, but I had some qualms about how the result would turn out visually.
They have been largely — although not entirely — set to rest. The architects in charge of that conversion did as good a job as could possibly be done in the circumstances. I only regret that the familiar passages and rooms of the old University, of which I was a student 30 years ago, had to be sacrificed in the process. Of course, they were no great shakes to look at and I do not say that anything has been lost by their disappearance, except that there is much less food for the nostalgia of the college's graduates from the fifties or before then.
The recent demolition operations at the bottom of Leeson Street and stretching over that very large site which incorporates the old Alexandra College site have opened up a perspective of the old UCD building, now the National Concert Hall, which never existed since the building was put up in the First World War. The only perspective which anyone had of that building was an oblique one from Earlsfort Terrace and it develops a surprising degree of architectural interest to my layman's eye at any rate, when seen face on. It is a great pity that that site, obviously very valuable, must now be built on so as once more to obscure that view; and I hope that the architects in charge of replacing the demolished buildings will leave even a little alley-way from the Leeson Street side to the Earlsfort Terrace side so that there can be some impression of what the building looks like when seen, as buildings should be seen, from a distance appropriate and proportionate to their bulk.
I have seen the facilities of the National Concert Hall several times since it was opened. They seem to be first class. I am not in a position to speak with any musical authority. I am simply an amateur there too, as to the acoustical qualities or the facilities for performers, but I do not think I have heard too many complaints about that, even from those whose judgment I would respect.
The purpose of this Bill is to regularise what may seem to the Minister or the Government a quite subordinate part of the concert hall's operations. However, I think and I am sure many others would agree, that there are some kinds of entertainment — I do not mean to be facetious — which are enhanced by the fact that you can have a drink before or after them. That is something that Myles na gCopaleen, one of the greatest Irishmen ever born, poked fun at, but not seriously, because he saw the point too when he wrote how extraordinary it was that no one seemed able to put up with an evening at the theatre completely sober, that when the interval arrived there was a "humiliating exodus for whiskey." Nonetheless, what he said in satiric form is true. There are a range of aesthetic experiences, of which the theatre is one and a concert is another, which are enhanced for the visitor and made into an evening out in the sense that an evening at the cinema or an evening at some other entertainment never could be, by the fact that one can have a social couple of drinks with friends — or by oneself if one is a solitary drinker — before, in the middle of or after the performance. The legal doubts about the legitimacy of serving drink in the NCH should now be put to rest.
From something in the Minister's speech for which she is in no way to blame I cannot help observing the extremely nannyish attitude of the Irish State towards the whole subject of buying and selling drink. Needless to say, it is not because the Irish themselves are in their nature nannyish about that subject. You yourself, Sir — but perhaps it is not in order to make comments about the Chair's personal abstinences — the Irish as a people are not nannyish but they have allowed nannyish manners to be wished on them, in this as in so many other things, by our neighbours.
The abuse of alcohol is a terrible curse in this country. I am not saying, as some people would, that the abuse derives to some extent from the sense of repression inspired by its only-partial-legitimacy, by the fact that you cannot buy a drink between 2.30 p.m. and 3.30 p.m. or during long hours on a Sunday and many pubs close earlier than their patrons would wish because they are obliged to do so by law. That is an nannyish approach to alcohol that we should have outgrown and we should be willing to form a new attitude towards it starting from scratch. We should make a zero calculation about the whole problem of licensing the sale of intoxicating liquor. There is room for some form of control and licensing; and the very form most needed is the one which is least visible, namely the control of its sales to minors. That is where there is the greatest abuse and the least effective law. Aside from that there is the case for looking at the question of licensing from the ground up.
It is fantastic that the Minister should make a speech here referring to licences for the Dublin theatres and — note this for scrupulous nannyism — only for those Dublin theatres which have letters patent granted originally under the Dublin Stage Regulation Act, 1786. Are we to issue a stamp in commemoration of the bi-centenary of that Act? Is that why you cannot get a drink in the Gate or Eblana Theatres? I do not know the reason. Perhaps I am wrong to mention these theatres by name; I cannot tell the press what to print, but I regret now having mentioned them, because for all I know I may have been doing an unwitting injury or causing annoyance to their proprietors and managers, and I do not want to do that. If only certain Dublin theatres which conform with regulations laid down in 1786 received special licensing consideration, the whole structure must be one of the most absurd of all our legislative structures.
Put that beside what the Minister went on to say especially about licences — I hope she does not mind me putting it in this way — she said proudly: "Special liquor licences have been given under various Intoxicating Liquor Acts to places such as the bus station in Áras Mhic Dhiarmada." You must go up two flights of stairs to get a drink if you are at the Eblana and you want a drink. The last time I was there, one had to walk up the main concourse and push through crowds waiting to go to Navan and Tullamore and go up another flight of stairs to get to the bar — by which time most of the interval was over — and then one had to force one's way through the thirsty throng. The bus station in Áras Mhic Dhiarmada has a bar as have airports, railway stations and greyhound tracks. Are we not a great little people? We have managed to licence greyhound tracks, but we cannot make sure that one can get a convenient drink in all theatres. Above all, we have not succeeded in curing the greatest omission of all in this area, the absence of proper liquor licences in ordinary restaurants. We must be the only country in Europe in which that is so. The Minister made special mention of airports. I do not mind making a parenthetic prediction, that the best business done at Knock airport will be in the bar — providing some 18th or 19th century Act will entitle Monsignor Horan's company to apply for and get a liquor licence.
The idea that you can get a drink more easily standing out on the windy terrace of a greyhound track than you can in a restaurant—I mean a drink of beer or spirits—is fantastic. I am not the first person who has said that in this House, but it is so seldom that we get an intoxicating Bill here that I must ask your indulgence, Sir to say one or two brief words on this. In happier days when I was Minister for Trade, Commerce and Tourism, one of the things I first tried to do—unfortunately my term of office did not last long enough for me to complete it, as with many other things I had running—was to put an end to this ludicrous situation which is a severe handicap on the tourism side. I felt able to take an interest in this under my tourism hat, and I was urged on by Bord Fáilte and by the Restaurant Owners' Association. I encountered opposition from the licensed trade. I do not want to make cheap fun of the licensed trade, far from it. They conduct a legitimate and difficult business, one with responsibility of all kinds, and many of them, despite what the public think, do not make a reasonable income for their efforts. They must carry a large tax load and pass it onto their customers and expect the customers to smile. Their apprehension was that the extension of licences to restaurants would rob them of business.
