Parents probably wrung their hands at the news that drunk teenagers who turn up at Dublin 4's legendary disco at Old Wesley Rugby Club are looked after in an on-site medical room.
The event's organiser, Donie Bolger, emphasised this week that the first aid room has always been there, and mostly deals with blistered heels from stilettos, asthma sufferers who have forgotten inhalers and the odd bump or bruise.
Bolger says: "In around 8pc or 9pc of cases it is kids who have turned up drunk and are not admitted to the disco but are brought to the medical room until their parents come and bring them safely home."
The fact that the organisers of the no-alcohol disco for young teenagers have to take such measures may be portrayed as a grotesque manifestation of the alcohol culture on Dublin's southside. But in truth the scenario could be replicated in every town and city across the country.
Old Wesley enforces a strict no-alcohol policy, but it is a fact of life that kids get tanked up as part of their social life everywhere in Ireland and have done so for a long time.
By third year in every secondary school there is a significant cohort of pupils who drink regularly, and they are now more likely to be girls. At the emergency department of Cork University Hospital, the majority of teenagers being treated after drunken escapades are female.
Typically classes in school split evenly between the boozers and the non-drinkers. Social life may revolve around those who drink and those who don't.
The European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) shows 52pc of 15- to 16-year-old Irish girls drink every month, and 48pc of boys.
Dr Bobby Smyth, a Dublin child and adolescent psychiatrist who specialises in addiction, says: "The average age of onset of alcohol use in Ireland has dropped by two or three years in a generation. Children commonly start drinking at 14 or 15.
Source: Kim Bielenberg, Irish Independent, 11/01/14
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