Minimum alcohol pricing is nigh

It's an artificial market price created by regulation rather than market forces.

Its the lowest price you can get on the market. Govt influenced or not.

It's the lowest price you can get it in the shops because the Government made it illegal for them to sell at the market price.

Do you really not understand ?

What is there now is not a market because sellers are forbidden by law to go below a certain price.

Real market conditions allow prices to fall as well as rise.

Your last sentence is true the market rate (price) no longer exists.

This thread was quiet for a while but there is renewed interest in the last few days including some discussion about the role of publicans in the introduction of MUP.

I thought I'd better provide a reminder in case anyone has forgotten.

The LVA which represents Dublin publicans is so proud of their involvement in making our home drinks more expensive that they are still dining out on their success. Today on their website under the heading Representation and Lobbying they say -

Lobbied successfully for Minimum Pricing for alcohol in the Public Health (Alcohol) Bill.

The VFI representing publicans outside Dublin is not so upfront about the part they played but in their archive you will find this from their CEO in 2021.

“If the Government is serious about this issue it must introduce Minimum Unit Pricing as a matter of urgency. MUP is legislated for in the same Act as the measures introduced today so it simply is a matter of the Minister commencing the relevant legislation.”

So next time you go into a pub and meet the smiling host behind the bar remember that he helped to pay the wages of the lobbyists who schmoozed into Leinster House and sold the MUP idea.

If you are that concerned about MUP, why would you drink in a pub?

Genuine question.

A pint in Dublin City Centre is 6 to 7.50 average now.

Anyone drinking in a pub is unlikley to be bothered by a 1.60 can of lager.

Continuing the trend of derailing the thread with absurd arguments I see.

It's possible to have a concern and be annoyed over MUP and yet still enjoy the experience of meeting friends in a pub on an infrequent basis.... Not everyone is as fundamentalist in their views of the world as you seem be.

Oh I think a little bit of factual information is useful before we put this subject to bed again.

My camp, well if I had a camp and we had been as well organised as the pro MUP lobby we might have stood a chance.

This is just a discussion site where people post their views. I don't expect you to stand over other posters opinions and I won't be held to account for others posts either.

You may regard yourself as a winner but there are many losers.

Take for instance a couple who drink 7 cans per week and a bottle of wine at the weekend. That consumption, 20 units between two people, is well within the low range for health damage.

They are now stuck paying €350 a year extra for their drinks while we wait to see if the MUP experiment works.

That's €350 after tax extra.

The actual total cost of their modest few drinks in their own home is €1034 annually.

That is very modest. The average per adult would be nearer the €2K mark. After tax. And higher than that for drinkers when the number of people who never buy alcohol are taken into account.

"A study from the Health Research Board last week said that 21% of Irish people hadn’t taken a drink in the last year, so there are more teetotallers than many people realise. (2014)"

Oh no people thought they were getting a great deal and made a funny comment based on the stigma around the kind of people who drink stella!!!! Call the fun police!!!!

They were getting bargains for the price of alcohol in our market which in 2020 was still the second highest price in europe so its all relative. A quick google shows those bargains are still more expensive than average prices in france or spain and thats just for beer, our wine prices are at least twice if not 3 times the price in those countries.

You may think we have cheap alcohol but compared to the rest of the EU we have the second most expensive alcohol. Pretending we live in a vacuum to suit your own anti alcohol agenda is just a poor attempt to skew statistics.

I continue to notice your still refusing to address the fact that our consumption has dropped every year for 20+ years while according to you weve been awash with cheap alcohol?

Modest you say but I am still amazed that our politicians got away with it.

They brought in a law that allows drink retailers to heist €350 a year from the budget of two citizens and keep it.

Two people who don't drink too much, go to work and pay their taxes and now they are down €350.

The politicians started it off in 2015, finished it in 2018, waited for the North to come on board until 2021, and finally went ahead when there was no prospect of that happening. In their three year deliberations they had many debates and dealt with many amendments. A quick glance through the vast amount of material, shows that you had one ally at least, Michael Healy-Rae.

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/bills/bill/2015/120/

Meanwhile the Vintners who thought they had achieved a great victory back in 2011, were on the sidelines tearing their hair out. Looking at the supermarkets taking away their livelihood with the 48 cans for €35 carry on.

Utterly disingenuous answer.

This isn't regulating the operation of the market, it's setting the actual price which was higher than the price that was available. Regardless of supply and demand, regardless of competition, of economies of scale etc etc

How many markets does this occur in?

The old price was the market price. The new price is the market price. There appears to be no price that isn't the market price.

As an analytical \ useful concept therefore your use of market price has zero value. There is no meaningful sense in which the price has been set by the market for prices sold at MUP. It's nonsense.

You want is simple?

Simple question, in this scenario - the price has been set by the government: Yes or No. 

The previous price that the retailer was selling the product at was €1. 

The government introduced MUP and now the retailer cannot sell it at that price, but must sell it at least at the minimum of €2.

If I buy the product for €2, therefore, the price has been set by the government.

Yes or no?

It's pretty clear your inability to answer a simple question about MUP's effect on price makes it obvious your posts are just parroting the same line without any understanding as if copied and pasted from a textbook.

And a line that has been demonstrated above to be of zero value and entirely misleading and deceptive when in the scenario your refused to engage with, the €2 price being in every meaningful sense of the words is a government set price.

And in a further example of lack of understanding - if you don't hear anyone complaining about the government regulating rent prices you obviously haven't read the boards threads discussing same or criticisms of it from economists. There's zero connection between MUP and rent controls. One might be a good idea and the other not, one might be unconstitutional and the other not, one might be against EU treaties and the other not. To wave that away as "it's the same thing" is a position without merit or foundation.