Alcohol Action Ireland's annual alcohol market review and price survey again demonstrates the remarkable affordability of alcohol to every day shoppers and the urgent necessity to implement the Public Health Alcohol Bill including Minimum Unit Pricing that will ensure the low cost of the strongest, cheapest alcohol will be tackled.

• Alcohol so cheap – Irish Men can drink to weekly low risk threshold for as little as €8.49; women €5.49.
• Ireland’s Off-Licence holders share a €3.74 billion bonanza market
• Highly sophisticated pricing model ensures alcohol affordability is universal throughout urban, regional or rural Ireland.

Additionally, the Survey highlights the sophisticated pricing model for alcohol across the Irish market that enhance affordability at all levels of retail experience and the scale of the Irish Off-Trade shared amongst a small number of major retail operators.

The survey conducted over seven days, 22-29 July, across four nationwide locations, two urban and two regional/rural centres highlights that cider products remain the cheapest, strongest alcohol products available to the off-trade consumer. Beer products are the second cheapest just ahead of Wine and Spirit products such as Gin and Vodka.

The methodology deployed sought to establish the unit cost per Standard Drink: 10g of pure alcohol in each product surveyed, for example –
A Beer product that is 4.3% ABV in a 500ml volume container, contains 1.7 Standard Drinks, while a Gin product that is 37.5% ABV in a 700ml volume container, contains 21 Standard Drinks.

The HSE low risk weekly guidelines on alcohol consumption for healthy adults aged 18-65 are currently:
Men: 17 Standard Drinks, and women: 11 Standard Drinks

In line with our findings –
• an adult male, consuming alcohol within these low-risk guidelines can reach the weekly threshold for as little as €8.49, and
• an adult female, consuming alcohol within these low-risk guidelines can reach the weekly threshold for as little as €5.49.

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