23% here drink 63% of alcohol

In a ‘country note’ on Ireland in its recently-published Tackling Harmful Alcohol Use, the OECD points out that despite having higher levels of taxation for all the types of alcohol beverages, Ireland’s per capita alcohol consumption of 11.7 litres of pure alcohol remains above the OECD average of 9.1 litres.

However preliminary Revenue Commissioners’ estimates for 2014 indicate a slight drop to 11 litres, it points out.

And while the OECD report points out that 38% of Irish 15 year-olds had experienced alcohol in 2010 this proportion had decreased from 2002 when this figure was 43%.

In the UK, this figure has risen from 72% to 75% during this time.

As for total consumption patterns among men and women in Ireland, the OECD study finds that women with high education are twice as likely to be hazardous drinkers than less-educated women where this social gradient for men is less clear-cut.

The report finds that the heaviest-drinking 20% of the Irish population drinks 63% of all alcohol, a situation similar to that in the UK.

Interestingly, this figure comes out about average for the OECD countries considered and compares to a figure of the heavies-drinking 20% consuming 90% of all alcohol in Hungary at the highest end of the spectrum and 52% in France at the lowest end.