Do you reckon you drank more or less than this?
The level of alcohol consumption in Ireland in 2015 showed a slight decrease on the 2014 figure, with Irish people having consumed 0.7% less alcohol last year than the year previous.
With figures from the Revenue Commissioners alcohol clearance data, DCU Economist Tony Foley used the CSO Population and Migration Estimates to conclude that Irish people’s consumption of alcohol dropped from 11.086 lpa (litres of pure alcohol) in 2015 to 11.013 lpa last year.
The decline in the level of alcohol consumption is the continuation of a trend that started in the years after 2001, when Ireland had the highest level of alcohol consumption in the OECD database.
Since then, the report concludes, alcohol consumption in Ireland has dropped by 23.9%.
Commenting on the figures, Foley said: “It is useful to put the Irish figure into an international perspective. The latest OECD health statistics reports an OECD average alcohol consumption for 2013 or latest year of 8.8lpa, Ireland in this database is measured as 10.6lpa.
“The OECD average has been identified as a policy target for Ireland.
“However, this is not necessarily appropriate. The OECD database includes far distant and culturally specific countries such as Turkey and Israel with very low alcohol consumption around 2.6 and 1.4 lpa respectively and several other countries with low-ish consumption such as Canada, Chile, Japan, Mexico and USA.
“The non EU countries in the database have an average consumption of 7.1 lpa.
“The 21 EU members included in the OECD database have an average consumption of 9.9 compared to the 10.6 recorded in the database for Ireland.
“Ireland is not widely out of line with this. These figures exclude unrecorded consumption which can be relatively high in some countries.”
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