In the same week that Ireland came out on top of an EU binge drinking survey the Irish Government announced in was introducing a pilot scheme which will see it pay to literally drive people to drink. Free night buses will be introduced to collect and transport people from their own homes to bars and clubs in their locality. The Irish government has recently spent millions on anti drink campaigns and alcohol awareness programs while promising further anti drink legislation coupled with the curtailment and restriction of alcohol advertisement. In what can only be described as a bout of nanny state schizophrenia the same government now deems it fit to subsidise 'booze buses' which will drop people off free of charge at their local bar to drink themselves silly.

The root of the problem that sees such an extraordinary move by the Irish government lies in the failure of the great experiment which removed personal choice and attempted to turn Irish bars into health clubs, the introduction of the draconian smoking ban. Instead of people flocking to bars as promised, once profitable pubs have closed in the hundreds as people stayed away due to lack of interest in non smoking sterile pubs bereft of customers and atmosphere. Hardest hit have been provincial towns and villages where the pub was the focal point of social gatherings and interaction.

A one year pilot booze bus scheme is soon to commence in four or five rural areas at the cost of €500,000. As Ireland has hundreds of rural communities, were the scheme to be rolled out on a national basis the people availing of the scheme will not be the only staggering hallmark about it.

Government ministers in justifying the booze bus scheme point out that rural communities do not have access to the same transport facilities as those in the larger cities and towns. They also claim rural people suffer greater inconvenience now the government has insisted on strict enforcement of it's own anti drink driving legislation and therefore it should step in to provide free transport to and from bars ! They fail to acknowledge that it was their own smoking ban legislation which forced these people out of the pubs in the first place in turn destroying the social lives of many in these communities.

However they might try to defend and justify this scheme, it is as utterly ridiculous and ultimately doomed to failure and will be a fitting epitaph to the years of social engineering this government have engaged in. The root cause for the closure of almost a thousand bars in Ireland is the smoking ban. If people have chosen to turn their backs on non smoking pubs then they are unlikely to avail of a non smoking bus to take them to a non smoking bar even if they were paid never mind have provided for them free of charge.

In the not too distant future the only remnants of the traditional Irish rural pub will be memories and photographs of smiling people enjoying themselves and making merry unbothered by the yoke of intolerant meddlers and government. Perhaps then the booze buses will see a new lease of life bussing tourists to where once these pubs stood.