Waxy’s loses underage appeal

A VFI pub claiming that a charge of allowing drink to be supplied to a minor should have been dismissed has lost its appeal to the Supreme Court.

While the pub, Waxy’s Bar in Marlboro Street in Cork, claimed to have exercised ‘due diligence,’ the five-judge Supreme Court didn’t see it that way and the conviction against the pub in the District Court of allowing a 17 year-old be supplied with alcohol in April 2006 contrary to the Intoxicating Liquor Acts 1988 and 2000 will stand, according to a report in the Irish Independent.

Another charge of permitting her to be in the bar was dismissed.

The pub claimed that she had produced an age card with a fuzzy photo to try to gain entry to the premises but was refused admission by the doorman.

However when she produced a passport and driving licence (both of which were not her own) he did let her in. But after being challenged by a garda subsequently while in the pub, she admitted that she was not the person in the documentation.

The pub has been ordered to close for 11 days which will lose the pub some €14,000 in profits whilst sustaining additional wage costs of €2,980, stated the pub.

According to the Independent, Waxy’s took judicial review proceedings in the High Court which dismissed the challenge.

The High Court judge pointed out that the only acceptable form of drinking-age ID was the garda-approved Age Card but Waxy’s appealed his decision to the Supreme Court.

And in the Supreme Court judgment Mr Justice John MacMenamin backed the High Court decision, pointing out that there was no evidence that the barman asked the girl for ID “or even having exercised any due diligence” in finding out her age, he said.