Ireland's new alcohol warning

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1:07Thank you for downloading this podcast from the BBC. I'm Katie Flannery and you're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. In this edition of Assignment, I'm in Dublin, the capital of Ireland. The country has seen the introduction of some of the strongest warnings on consuming alcohol anywhere in the world. So are Irish people changing their relationship with drink? This is a drinking song from Cork called Johnny Jump Up, named after a mythical cider. Well, oh never, oh never, oh never again If I live to a hundred or a hundred and ten I fell to the ground and I could not get up I'd rather drink it in a quart of the Johnny Jump Up The traditional Irish pub.

1:59Around the world, home to a convivial, sometimes raucous atmosphere. An alcoholic drink, or two, or three, and distinctive music. That's what gets people going. It's absolutely great to look down in a crowd when you have them riled up and people are just launching plastic pints around the place and there's beer flying anywhere. I love that, you know, that's what it's all about. Tomás Mulligan helps run the Cobblestone Pub, which his father owns in the Irish capital Dublin. It's a legendary music venue and Tomás is also a keen musician. Drinking, though, can lead to regret.

2:40Johnny Jump Up is a song about the fear, and that's something that anyone who's had a few pints can attest to. It's a universal feeling in Ireland, the fear being, oh mother of God, what did I do last night? Alcohol, socialising and music have long been inextricably linked to the Emerald Isle. Three quarters of people in Ireland drink, but the country now has some of the strongest warning labels on bottles and cans of alcohol anywhere in the world, linking drinking to cancer and liver disease. I'm Katie Flannery and this is the documentary from the BBC World Service. And in this edition of Assignment, I'm finding out how Irish people are changing their relationship with alcohol.

3:25I think people expect you to be mad drinkers singing about it and whatnot. Does that follow you around, do you think? Is that a bit of a trope? Yeah, 100%. You could look at it as if, am I playing a character on stage? Like, then again, I've lived that life. I know exactly what it is.

3:46While Smithfield, where the cobblestone is located, is a popular area for socialising, many more people head south just across the River Liffey. So I'm heading there to find out more about people's attitude to drink. It's Saturday evening. It's been tipping down with rain for 24 hours, and it's still quite early, about half past six. But here in Drury Street, in the centre of Dublin, the pubs are filling up and people are even drinking beers on a bench next to me. For some, it's the quintessential Dublin night out. Jack Kelly is in his element. So my name is Jack. I'm from County Galway in Bannelslow, 29 years old.

4:26Dublin's a great spot because it's more like spontaneous drinking, I guess. That's why it's famous for it, I suppose. The cliche is quite true. It's very pub-centric, drink-heavy, which, you know, has its pros, which is socialising and stories and what Irish people do so well, and the cons, which is hangovers. Talk us through, like, a big night out for you. Last night, I had a few pre-drinks in my place. We were drinking gin and tonic. Probably had, like, between me and three friends, the bottle of gin mixed with tonic, and then went out to the club, and I, like, you know, I had some shots. Or, like, a more general night would be pints.

5:08in the local pub, which could consist of maybe the soft Friday at work. Six pints? Yeah. So let's say it was like a Wednesday and you had three pints. Would you even count it? No. Three pints on a Wednesday? Yeah. I mean, I'm living a healthy lifestyle right there. Probably a heavy night casually would be like six plus pints. Health-wise, do you have concerns there? I'm a pretty fit person. I ran a marathon a year ago. I know my limits. I think it's all individual as well. So as long as you know what your limits are, I think it's fine health-wise. You're from Galway and you grew up in Galway. What was it like when you first started drinking?

5:43Ireland, especially in the West, has a history of young people starting to drink when they're probably like 14, 15. And it would usually be in a field with a horrendous can of cider. And then when you're 17, your dad brings you to a pub, buys you your pint of Guinness, and that's where it takes hold. Honestly, it's quite difficult to try and embark on the sober journey in Ireland because it's just so intrinsically entwined into our culture. You said you're a Guinness drinker. The likes of Guinness Zero Zero and other Zero drinks, would that be something that's attractive? Such a waste of time.

6:22It's the same price as a pint. It's going to take as much from my wallet as an actual pint would and it doesn't do anything. I may as well get a Coke. I always kind of flirt with the idea of going totally sober But then I instantly dissuade that and have a fine. I will say, so I'm 29, and I went to college, obviously, in my late teens, early 20s. And, like, we went out so much more than people now, you know? What's different? What's happening now? Everyone always says, like, cost to live in, or, like, inflation or whatever. That probably is a part, but also I feel like, you know, anyone born 2005 after after have such a good insight into how negative drinking can be and the health impacts and all the rest of it.

7:05Whereas I was born in 96 and we just never, when I was 21, ever thought about that. We were just like, let's go out. Jack believes young Irish people in their teens and early 20s are drinking less than he did at their age. And figures show in the last 25 years, consumption generally has fallen by around a third. Since 2020, supermarkets and corner shops have had to erect barriers between sections selling alcoholic drinks and general products. And from May 2026, all bottles and cans of alcohol were supposed to display a label which states drinking causes liver disease and is linked with fatal cancers.

7:44Far stronger warning than anywhere else in the EU. Some drinks manufacturers pre-empted this date, so I'm going off to a local off-license to check which ones have. So we're just at a regular off-license here and I'm just going to pop in for a sec just to check out some of the labels. I'm just looking to see if I can see if any of the alcohol drinks have the label on it at the minute so I've actually just pulled out a bottle of Bulmers or cider. It's quite a large label actually. It has calories as well for it and it has big red lettering, all capital letters. Drinking alcohol causes liver disease and there is a direct link between alcohol and fatal cancers.

8:28And then we also have the picture of the pregnant lady and kind of a cross to say no drinking if you're pregnant. But yeah, it is quite considerably larger than the other alcohol warning labels which really are teeny tiny, so this is maybe twice the size. Oh, and now there is a white wine. as well, Moxie in New Zealand, Savion Blanc, 2004, that has the label as well. The two of them, it does stand out how much bigger the labels are in comparison to other drinks. Although these particular cider and wine bottles carry the warning, that's a pretty small percentage of alcohol sold in Ireland. That's because in the summer of 2025, campaigners for the alcohol labels were hit by a political bombshell.

9:14The Irish government, which had already allowed three years for the drinks industry to implement the new law, decided to postpone it for another two years until 2028. So I'm off to meet Sheila Gilheny, the CEO of the public health advocacy group Alcohol Action Ireland.

9:35Hi, Sheila. How are you? You too. Thanks for meeting you. Good to see you there. How are they? Yeah, so our office is just on up here. Brilliant. Thanks so much. Have you seen the labels yet, actually? Yeah, they're on Bulmers anyway, and a couple of wine. Oh, they're on dozens. I'd say probably a couple of hundred at this stage, you know, across wines, cider, beer, and most recently we've just seen actually an Irish whiskey and I've seen a gin carrying it. If you go into any of the supermarkets, I just was on Super Value yesterday, actually just doing a quick count, you know, and I came across about 30, 40, and that was just one shot.

10:08What percentage of people consume alcohol in Ireland? So it's about 73 % of adults, and an adult is an over 15-year-old, would drink. The amount that we drink has been going down in the last number of years. It's all about the devil is in the detail, and probably what we're most concerned about is looking at younger people because that will set up a pattern for the future. And right now we know that there is definitely an increase in both drinking per head of population in that younger group and also in binge drinking. The drinking habits of young people in Ireland are complex. They're not starting to consume alcohol at such a young age as 20 years ago.

10:45They begin now on average at 17 rather than 15. However, once they start, consumption and binge drinking for young people is amongst the highest in Europe. What health impacts does alcohol have? You know, in any given day here in Ireland, probably about 1 ,500 hospital beds are taken up with people who are there because of alcohol. And those are just, if you like, the harms to the individual. There's also a massive amount of harm to others that arise from alcohol. One in six children are living in homes where there's harm from alcohol. A quarter of the adult population grew up with alcohol harm in the home.

11:20It's probably about 2.5 % of our GDP is swallowed up by alcohol harm. About£14 billion annually. It's a significant amount of money. Ireland was the frontrunner in restricting smoking. and since 2004 you weren't allowed to smoke in the workplace or restaurants and bars. We can learn from what we did with tobacco. 50 odd years ago, more than half the population would have been smoking. Now we're down to about 17%. And that happened because of a whole series of actions, a ban on smoking advertisements, high prices, increases in exercise duties, reduced availability. When you go into a shop, you don't see cigarettes for sale.

11:56So we need to learn from all of that. And you mentioned previously that the drink consumption in general is falling. Do we need the labels then if that's the case? And you might say, well, surely people know all of these things. Well, they actually don't. There was a recent survey which, you know, has had that lesson. Four out of ten people would have known that link between alcohol and cancer. At the moment, by far the bulk of the information that we have on alcohol comes from the alcohol industry. And it comes to us through saturation levels of alcohol advertising that sell you a product. And why do you think the government have postponed it?

12:27I think they allowed themselves to be influenced by the alcohol industry. And the reason I can say that with confidence is that I can see the number of meetings that they had with the industry. In the period between January and April of this year, they had at least seven meetings, so face-to-face meetings. So that's a very powerful thing to get in to be able to meet with senior ministers. They would not meet with the tobacco industry in the same way. If it hadn't been tariffs, it was going to be something, because all the same arguments were coming forward from the industry. And do you think there's a danger that these labels will never actually be mandatory?

12:55I suppose after all we've no idea what trade is going to be like in 2028? I would certainly have a concern about that. We have an industry that's very powerful that seeks to always push back, to delay, delay, delay or to disparage in some kind of way or to say it'll not work anyway or we don't really have a problem. I think the government capitulating to the alcohol industry would embolden the industry to try and push for other clawbacks on other legislation. And I would be saying to the government, you know, who's in charge here? Is it the alcohol industry? are they setting the terms or is it the government?

13:27We're going to put some of Sheila's points to the Irish drinks trade body later in the programme. We asked the Irish government why it had postponed the compulsory introduction of the labels. It told us the decision to defer was made following concerns raised about the impact of their implementation in the current global environment. I wanted to ask young men in their 20s, the group she was most concerned about, how much drinking they're actually doing. We're in a restaurant area in a courtyard outside a popular cinema near Temple Bar, Dublin's nightlife hub. Hi, Katie, lovely to meet you. James.

14:03I'm 22. I'm Dara, I'm 21. Mark, 21. Sean, 22. Sean, 22. And at the minute you're just having a bit of a pre-drinks? It's our friend's birthday, he's 22, so we're going for a meal. So we're kind of trying to kill time because I didn't really want to go home after work. There's not much to do in Dublin after a certain time. you know, six to seven or so. Like, the city kind of shuts down everything other than nightlife stuff. Whereas I know in, like, lots of parts of Europe, there's, like, coffee shops open. Like, there's none of that here. Yeah, and what about the humour tonight now? Will you have a few drinks after the meal, or what's the plan?

14:34Yeah, yeah, I think so. I definitely will. See, that matches a drink. Okay. And Dara only drinks a little bit. Maybe, like, two drinks a year, you know? One on my birthday, one at Christmas. Is there any reason for that? Not really. I mean, it's a combination of things. I don't really like the taste of it. Guinness is probably the one I would have, but also the cost of it. I am saving so much money by just getting the Club Orange, you know. Although none of our young people seem to fall into the category of binge drinkers, they've still seen teenagers who fall into that category. We were at a gig recently, actually, and we had to line up for it.

15:06And around us, there was so many, and they're probably younger than us. You can get a bit of a younger demographic. Yeah, like maybe like 18, 19. And there were so many people being turned away because they were just way too drunk to get into the actual concert. We were dead sober for that, actually. I didn't drink at all that night. I just wanted to go to the concert and go, oh, yeah, yeah. Over the last 30 years, drinking has fallen by a third. But when people do drink, binge drinking is actually going up. So do you think when people do drink, like, when they're on it, they're on it. It's a bit all or nothing.

15:32Ireland has a bit of a Puritanism culture. I think it kind of comes from maybe the Catholic guilt or something like that. But where it's kind of like, you know, let's say you have a beer with your dinner every day. You're an alcoholic. But if you go to the pub on a Saturday night and you have 20 beers, there's nothing wrong with that. These labels, Jamaican. Yeah, they're interesting. They remind me of the ones on Box of Fags. No, I haven't seen any on any of them yet. It's the first time I'm seeing them anyway. Would that put you off buying it? No, to be honest, nah, not really. Like, I mean, I think everyone kind of knows it's bad for you, but we do it anyway, I guess, so...

16:01The cigarettes one are far more graphic. People still get them, and that's... I mean, there's a diagram, I guess, there of a pregnant woman, but that's not... it's not as clear or vivid, I guess. Yeah. So it wouldn't really faze you at all? No. This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.

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17:24I'm Katie Flannery on assignment in Ireland.

17:32The lads may have been sceptical about the impact of the new warning labels, but it's clear it's become cooler in some quarters not to drink or to drink less. While craft beer has taken off in the last couple of decades, there's also a trend now for craft beer zero alcohol, as there is for mainstream drinks like Guinness Zero Zero. I'm leaving Dublin to take the train south, down the coast to visit a local brewery.

18:00Katie, nice to meet you. How are you? Don't mind Dave, he's just cleaning lines.

18:08My name's Quincy Fennelly. I'm the co-founder and managing director of Wicklow Wolf Brewery. We're here in North County Wicklow, very close to the Dublin border. We're in existence now for nearly 11 years, and we're here in this site for about almost six years at this stage. How much beer do you produce? For a 12-month period, in the region of a couple of million pints. So we're doing reasonably well. but in the scheme of things we'd be small. Do you create zero alcohol products here? We don't do a zero but we do a 0.5 which still qualifies as alcohol free. It's come from a small base but it's growing very rapidly.

18:49I'd be lying if I'd said it was straight off the bat. We've been brewing 0.5 now for probably four years maybe five. I mean it's grown threefold most years albeit from a small base to start with. And how does that compare sales wise to your alcoholic beers? probably accounting for in the reason of 10 % of our output. It's a small part of our business, but is growing very rapidly. The whole landscape around alcohol-free is changing. I'm not drinking beer at the minute, and I don't have to apologise for it. I go and have a couple of 0.5s, and nobody seems to bat an eye. Whereas in times past, people are like, what's wrong with you?

19:27Why aren't you drinking, and you're boring, and all that? That's no longer the case. Do you mind me asking why you're not drinking at the moment? I'm in a local gym and we have a kind of a weight loss drive up till Christmas and I'm in a competition to lose weight. And obviously one of the ways to lose weight is to drink less or not drink. And I've decided until the 12th of December, I'm off to drink. Full disclosure, I have cheated once or twice. Do you think people would be surprised that a brewery owner isn't drinking? Not anymore. I know a distillery owner who never drank and makes some of the best whiskey in Ireland.

19:59I wouldn't encourage everybody to not drink ever again or I've no business, but it's no harm to give it a break. It's just a little bit noisy here on the brewery floor, so we're going to just pop up to the office just to chat a bit further. No problem, you're very welcome. Wicklow Wolf, like the majority of brewers and distillers in Ireland, hasn't yet brought in the new alcohol warning labels. They'll apply to all drinks imported into or produced in Ireland, but not to drinks produced in Ireland for export abroad. What's your opinion now on this alcohol label? Obviously excessive consumption of alcohol is bad for you.

20:37I mean, nobody can deny that. Nobody can deny the fact that there is a carcinogenic link between cancer and alcohol. What I do have an issue with is, particularly here in Ireland, there's been an attempt to impose unique health warning labels on Irish product, which would make our life extremely difficult because we export to various different countries who have different requirements, most of them the same within the EU. So would you not have an issue with it if all the other countries had to comply in the exact same way? Would that be okay? Completely, absolutely. I'd have no issue with that at all.

21:12But the way it was going to be imposed was that we would have had to have separate labels for Ireland and separate labels for Italy and France and wherever. That just doubles our cost and makes our production more complex. There are a lot of processed foods are carcinogenic and they're not being required to put health warnings on their labels, which I think is slightly unfair on alcohol. We shouldn't be singled out.

21:41If you wanted to stray away from alcoholic temptation altogether, there used to be a completely non-alcoholic bar in the capital you could visit. Perhaps a sign of how difficult it could be to be tea total in Ireland, it now does serve alcohol. But the image remains of a chill place to play a game of snakes and ladders or chess without the need to drink. My name's Roisin, I'm a supervisor here at Bored. Bored originally started as a non-alcoholic pub, but now we have some alcohol. We still have a high percentage of zero-zero beers. What's the difference between, we'll say this and a cafe? I think it's the vibes.

22:17Like when you walk in here, you can see the layout. The benches are very like traditional Irish pub. I think that it's kind of like that nostalgic feeling, I suppose. You can tell like this has the comforting nature of a pub. But then you've also got that selection of zero beers for the people who want to participate in that culture but don't particularly want to drink. I mean, we have the board games and everything here. So it is a very group-centered bar. What about choosing at Monopoly? I don't know. I don't get into that side. That's too political for me. No arguments over Scrabble. Oh, God.