Episode 5 The Nolan Show

Here is what we have got tonight. Time to remove flags? A row over an

Alliance call for the route of the cycle race.

The Health Minister says drink is being sold at pocket money prices.

But is it Government's business being involved?

A nurse shares the near death experience of patients. One man

tells us he has had a glimpse of the other side.

And the 16-year-old schoolgirl bidding for stardom, we have a

performance from The Voice's Rachael O'Connor.

Hello. A big show I had of ours. Their lines has come under fire

after saying flags should be removed from the route of the term won. --

the Alliance. -- the Giro d'Italia. Rather naive or view to suggest that

these flags and emblems should be taken down? It is not naive. I think

it is reality. We need to face reality. We have had this going on

for far too long. The Alliance Party has been calling for this for the

last 40 years, to deal with a shared future, about flags, about having

places that people feel safe to go in, not marking territories with

pavements being painted. Flags up on lamp posts and murals on the wall,

paramilitary murals. To intimidate people. And you want the police and

community workers to climb of those lamp posts and take them down? The

flags on lamp posts are illegal, so it is to the police to deal with any

illegal acts. I am not saying to the police, climb up and get them, what

I said was, we need support from politicians or -- all the parties

should support the police. We need community organisations, to have the

chance to have the debate, whether they want it or not. Do they want

the flags, do they want paramilitary murals at the end of the street?

What is wrong with that? The first time I saw flags was because they

took down a flag at the City Hall. We had an incident here in 1963 or

1964 when a trickle up and appeared in the window of a Sinn Fein

office. People removed it, thousands went up in its place. That reaction

does not make it right. It might be the right thing to do. I am not

interested in neutrality, I am interested in people having their

Unionists or Republican loyalist views. We make people neutral and

whitewash them. I am just back from London, the places in London you

would not go into, and they do not have flags up. There are places in

New York, Los Angeles, but people don't go into. They do not need

flags up to kick them out. And that needs to see the amount of

journalists that visit these places. People go to Vietnam... But is it

the image we want to send out to the rest of the world, we will tell you

about the murder campaign and the violence, and the gunman in masks?

There are people want to come and see it, and if we look at some of

the -- this stuff, most visitors' reactions -- most visited reaction

is Giants Causeway. I see these murals as political murals. Whether

or not I agree with them is immaterial, what I am saying is you

cannot neutralise the society. We went through all of this, and you

talk about politicians getting together and doing all of this. What

came first, the politics or the paramilitaries? We have so much in

this country that we can put on our walls, we do not want to attract the

wrong type of people to come and look at paramilitary murals on our

walls. What about history? It is part of history, but are we not to

-- do we want to glorify violence's to ask people to go away with the

images of gunman... You are raising this around a cycle race. I follow

cycling, and difficult it is that if you watched the Tour de France this

year you will see every political lunatic trying to get their views

put across on the TV. These people are here to take part in a cycle

race. I will be flags from every country in the world. You saying to

me realistically that you do not want anybody turning up with a

flag? It isn't going to happen. We also need to remember... Just

remember here, Sir Bradley Wiggins is going to win the race and they

will be -- and they will all be wearing union Jacks on their shorts.

People are here to focus on the race. I doubt there will be murals

with masks and guns. -- flags with masks on guns. These races are by

professional Bull -- these races are filmed by professional cameramen.

Nobody is interested in anything other than the cyclists and how they

perform. And this is a team race, so if you take Bradley Wiggins' race --

team, this is not something that has just come about... There is a wider

issue, which is never mind whether these murals should stay up or stay

down for a cycle race, should they stay up or stay down for all of us

in the society we live in? We should not just be doing something because

I race is coming up in Northern Ireland. Maybe you are right. And we

should have a debate about whether we want these murals and flags

long-term in this country. There is a lady here, go ahead. We are

speaking about taking murals down. What we do not realise is community

groups and the Government want reconciliation. Surely bringing

these murals down will not provide us with reconciliation. The youth of

today will not be in any way together, we will just be segregated

even more. The man here. I would like to pick up something Billy

said. It was the single state loyalist British state that

introduced the stuff -- this stuff. I am from Tyrone, and I see a big

UVF gunman, I do not feel confident walking up and down there. So maybe

you want to speak to that young man. How old are you? 18. He does not

feel comfortable. I do not feel comfortable going to Royal Hospital.

I do not feel comfortable shopping in most shopping centres. I would

say to you, there are lot of Republican murals. Do you want to of

the hunger strikers to take the hunger strikers. I am not from

Belfast, so I do not know. But the point I am making is, why

raise this around a cycle race. Obviously she has never seen a cycle

race before. Go ahead, at the front. This country is rich in culture. Why

should we remove it just because we have a world event coming to it? The

Alliance are making a big issue, and so are Sinn Fein, they want it in

west Belfast and all of that. We should express the culture. You have

seen the fighting -- you have seen the fighting that there is in this

country. Are you saying the way to handle that is to have them all up?

No. I I am against the paramilitary murals. When you have gunman holding

machine guns, that is glorifying violence. That is something we do

not want to showcase. It is my right to say, we have a very rich culture

here. That is the flag of our nation. We have beautiful scenery we

can debate on our walls. We have lots of sporting heroes. So why take

flags down? Do you think it will run smoothly when you take the flags

down? What happened when the flag was taken down in City Hall? Chaos.

Why is the flag so important to you? It is not, I am just stating a

fact. It is not important to me, it is just the chaos it causes. The

other macro -- if it hadn't been for us, we would either have above

Belfast City Hall the union jack up against the tricolour or no union

Jack at all. Go ahead, Chris. I think Anna has done us a service

about raising this issue. It is not about the Giro d'Italia, it is about

our society going forward. There is re-emerging going on around the

murals and take the point that there are different communities with

different about this. But Anna is right, we need to move away from

expressing the crude idea of paramilitary murals. But in terms of

the flag, we need to be clear. This idea that it is a cultural

expression to get up on a lamp post and stick up a flag is ridiculous.

One of your own election candidates put on social media this week a

photograph of himself and erecting a flag in the middle of February. I

don't know if he is trying to claim cheap it as a loyalist but what does

that do for this society? One of your election candidates is claiming

marked territory. I am not aware that happened but I will accept what

you are saying. It is one of your election candidates. I will have to

check. The reality about this is that the union flag is the flag of

this nation and I have already said that people will want to put it up.

I do think the Alliance Party is obsessed by loyalists and

Republicans and I think everything and it talks about, she doesn't

mention the gun men on the Falls Road and never has. If you want to

check social media, you will find people close to the Alliance Party

are actually saying that our flag back up. I have never said they were

Unionist paramilitary murals, I have only ever talked about paramilitary

murals. My point is I absolutely recognise that the union Jack is the

flag of the country, I respect that. But what I object to is seeing the

Union Jack being left on lamp post. Or the flags and the hills, it is

all about history. Why would you want to take that away? You want the

flags down, do you? I think it is through no to we have flags and they

have been cut that I'm torn. That is a different story. I want to talk

about murals. I am here to talk about the complexities and the

understanding of what murals rarely stand for. On one hand, we have

local communities who have a negative attitude towards reimaging

programmes and then we have the positive images against these

programmes. In east Belfast, over the last year, we are currently in

the process of removing of 25 paramilitary political murals, call

them what you want, but is currently happening. I support, and I said it

early on, my difficulty with reimaging is they took down a mural

and replaced it with a butterfly, in my opinion, the people that put up

in past place -- in the first place, I don't agree with reimaging but

what I do agree with is reimagining. We also have no idea how much

community support there is for murals. A lot of people would be

terrified about speaking out against them. They might get shot or

kneecap. Let me put it like this, I work in the community, to murals

were taken down recently, they were taken off because we worked with the

organisation in the area and we worked with the residents, we

carried out an independent survey and people said they wanted it. If

you want to come here, you will see these lovely light shining up on the

wall web pages to be murals. Let's be iced about this, yes you can do

it, but it is about changing people's mindsets. I do want to ask

you something that you talked about on the radio today because we were

discussing this on the radio programme and got on to how much of

a grid to paramilitaries have on Northern Ireland and you said on the

radio show today that you believe the police are turning a blind eye

to protection rackets, collection money, intimidating businesses, do

you stand over that? I think they are not doing enough. You said

turning a blind eye. That is what I am saying, they are not doing

enough. You said yourself... Are they turning a blind eye? will, if

you are not doing enough and you aren't doing it, then they are

turning a blind eye. They are not doing enough because I think there

is the lack of political support for them to challenge paramilitaries. As

you said, quite rightly yourself, we all know about this protection

racket, I know about it, police know about prostitution being run by

paramilitaries, human trafficking, there was involvement of our

paramilitaries. Are paramilitaries alive and well in that they are

intimidating businesses and collecting money? I have worked with

a lot of my and I haven't had that. There is a lot of gangsterism and

organised crime going on and quite a lot of it comes from people who have

moved into this society. If Anna is saying that the police are letting

this happen -- happening, then that Mr. . You in the MLA have to take

this up. If the police are allowing people bashed the police to turn a

blind eye, you need to get that stop. On the collection of

protection money, would you advise a small business in any area... To

stand up to them? And what do they do if they get burnt out the next

day? I am quite willing to meet with any business who say they are paying

protection money to paramilitaries and I will go and meet them and we

will go and resolve it one way or another with the police. If Anna is

saying the police are turning a blind eye, if she is saying that the

police are in collusion with paramilitaries, they are on

protection rackets, I don't believe that is happening. I am saying and

it should call for an investigation. I am saying we are not doing -- they

are not doing enough. Don't say that. That is different from turning

a blind eye. I know myself, chops told me they paid projection money

on a weekly basis. That is something we need to deal with. Corner shops

are already suffering. You are telling me these are Loyalist

paramilitaries? To answer the question. Eyes-macro and you are not

aware of it? Are you telling me that? I know there are gangsters in

society. If anybody is aware of Loyalist paramilitaries, I am quite

happy to meet with them and try and get it resolved. Before we move on

to this, you have been at the heart of the story way you were attacked,

racial abuse, very little difference between something writing something

online and something shouting to you on this street, has it hurt? Of

course it has. It is really degrading, demeaning, file, and

absolutely horrid. These messages to me. Sometimes, people like me and

others give you such a hard time, did it hurt big time? I felt sad

about it. I love this country. And I felt, as an elected representative,

I have the right to speak out about issues I care very much about and I

thought I would make our society a better place. So, I just felt it was

so unacceptable, unjustified for them to react in this way. And I

expect people -- respect people expressing their views, but they

were not expressing their views, they were just abusing me, and that

is what I found really disappointing. And I have to say, I

must use your airtime to thank the hundreds of people who have sent me

messages, including Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister. Thank you.

Nick leg rope to you? he rang me this afternoon. He said, this is

Nick Clegg, and I said who? I told him, it is a very small element in

our society. It does not represent the majority of people. Don't talk

about Nick Clegg and tuition fees to downplay, if they are young people

in this audience. Thank you for coming in, Billy. Thank you for

coming in. Give our guests around of applause. Right... Loads of you

getting in touch tonight with the programme. We continue the

discussion on Twitter. Join the show and for a couple of hours after the

show, I will be talking to you on Twitter. If you want a ban us

tonight, he is the number. The course cost up to 5p a minute from

most landlines. If you are tweeting me, it comes straight into my phone.

Here it is. Right, now, 16-year-old Londonderry schoolgirls Rachael

O'Connor is trying to make it in The Voice. She has been described as

wonderful, original and great. We did hope to have her singing live

today but unfortunately, when she came in for a rehearsal this

afternoon, she was suffering from a really sore throat and we decided to

let her go home, get into bed, but she did, and thank you, recorded

beta full version of this song by Emily Sandy. -- Emeli Sande.

# So I will be job clown behind the clouds.

# I will be your clown. # I am going round in circles.

# From a distance, my choice is simple.

# From a distance, I can entertain. # And you can see me, I put make-up

on my face. # There is no way you can feel it.

# I am so far-away. # So I will be your clown. #.

Mum and dad are in the studio. Hello there. She was struggling today, and

she still sang that beautifully. You must be so proud. Very proud of her.

But she struggled tonight. Where is she? -- how is she? Are very sore

throat. You must be very excited. I am one of those dads who stand out a

football match and get very excited. It is a scary time, I guess, of

someone that age, that the aspiration is to make it big time.

Are you frightened that she -- if she doesn't, she will come crashing

down? How will you look after her? We are thankfully a grounded family,

she knows that this might happen. Every youngster wants to be a pop

star, millions try, one ought to make it, and she is realistically --

realistic enough to know it is a very slim chance. She was

disappointed to -- that she could not sing live tonight, but she does

what -- she just wants to do her best in the future. Give her a round

of applause and her mum and dad as well.

Here's what's still to come. Are the days of cheap booze with minimum

pricing back on the agenda, will all drinkers be penalised?

My next just met -- worked as an intensive care nurse for 17 years,

and gathered personal testimony from patients who claimed to have near

death experiences. Ladies and gentlemen, Doctor Penny Santoro.

Good to see you. Have a seat. How many years were you a nurse? 21

years, 17 were in intensive care. And by the nature of that, it is

concentrated, it is intense. Very much so. What you get to see is very

personal, it is intimate. Yes, you can build up quite a relationship

with your patient and the family as well. So you spend quite a lot of

time with them. It was early on in my career as an intensive care nurse

when I was looking after a man who was clearly dying, and it was on

this night shift when we kind of connected. I was going to do some

routine nursing care, and as I adjusted the bed, the man nearly

jumped out of the bed in agony. I felt as if I had swapped places with

him and I could understand what he was going through. He was terrified

of dying. Yes, and he knew he was dying, and he mouthed to me leave me

alone and let me die in peace. That is something which had such a

profound effect on me that I was motivated to learn more about death.

I just think that we do not know -- know enough about death. I looked at

nursing courses available, but they were all palliative care. So I

started reading about death and I came across a near death

experiences. I thought, these people are telling us that death is a

lovely experience, it is nothing to be afraid of. But I think my

training as a nurse was very scientific, it made me quite

sceptical, and I thought is this just the brain shutting down, is it

like oxygen, so I wanted to find out all of these things. And of course I

was working in intensive care which is the first -- perfect base to

study them. -- the perfect place. You saw a number of people who were

so seriously ill, that they were very, very close to death. And yet

it is confusing, disorienting, when -- it blew my mind when you told me

about some of the stories that what people somehow were able to tell

when they came out of consciousness. Give me an example.

The strongest case was a patient I was looking after. He was looking --

making quite a good recovery, but we decided to sit him in the chair this

morning. After we sat him in the chair and noticed his breathing

pattern has changed, and then the alarm started to go off that his

oxygen was a bit low. I gave him some extra oxygen, then he started

to go grey and clammy. I thought, this is not good. His heart rate

changed to a fast rhythm, his blood pressure dropped, and I thought if

we do not get this man into bed quickly he will have a cardiac

arrest. We got him back into bed, by which time he was deeply

unconscious. He was not responding to us calling his name, the doctor

came and reviewed him, we gave him some fluid for his blood pressure,

and then shortly afterwards he started to deteriorate again. I went

off to look for another doctor, but the consultant happened to be

walking in. He came and examined the man, Sean a pupil torch in his eyes,

and he waited and then his condition stabilised. The consultant went back

to his office. After about 30 minutes the patient started to

Flickr his eyelids a little bit, and then about three and a half hours

later he regained full consciousness. As soon as he did, he

said that he had been out of his body, he had been up on the ceiling

looking down. He accurately describe what the doctor did with examining

his eyes, he described me cleaning his mouth and described the

physiotherapist poking her head around the curtains. How could he

have? We don't know. He was deeply unconscious, so I thought, was it

because of lack of oxygen or the drugs? At the time he was not having

any drugs at all. So you believe from that story alone that he was

somehow really looking down on him dying? You think that's what

happened? Give me another example. There are many examples. Another

patient again, it started off with an out of body experience where he

felt he was on the shoulder of the nurse, looking down at what she was

doing to him. Then he said he floated upwards into a warm vortex

of bear, then he went into this place, it was another realm where he

saw a dead relative who came over and chatted with him. He was really

happy there, he had no pain, he was really comfortable, and he just

wanted to stay there. But the relative said, no, you have got to

go back, it is not your time. But that is possibly the brain being,

with a lack of oxygen, it is imagination, a dreamlike state, it

does not explain an out of body experience. It doesn't tell us that

when we die, that is going to happen. No, but people are very

profoundly transformed as a lot of the -- as a result of their

experience. But was that a relative he could not have known about? No,

this was another patient. We watched them, it was on a night shift, and

we could see him gesturing to somebody he could not see. He was

clearly talking, and he had this big smile on his face, and he was

saying, what are you doing here? In the morning when his family came

back, he said that during the night he had been visited by his dead

grandmother, his dead mother but also his sister, and he did not know

why his sister should be with him. Unbeknownst to him, his sister had

died a week before but nobody had told him that, the family did not

want to step back his recovery. So here's why I am not so interested in

this. Usually when I would hear discussions like this I would

think, someone winding it up, making it up. She spent decades in

intensive care, with many, many patients. And what if this does

happen? Does that mean it is scary to die, or not? What impact has it

had on you? It has made me re-evaluate my life, and reading

about these experiences and studying them in such great depth, because I

did the doctoral study for eight years, and it has had a great effect

on me. It is as if I have had to get rid of my figures -- preconceptions.

Having had this interaction with the patient as well as the deep study of

these experiences, has made me completely change my views. I have

to be more open-minded about what these experiences are. With my

research I have just scratched the surface. Does it make you more

religious? It can make some people who have the experience more

religious, it can make some people less religious if you like. It has

varying different effects. Mark Kelly, thank you for coming in. You

were injured in a bomb in 97 to six. What happened? In the context of

what happened. -- 1976. Initially I had been experiencing a good

recovery, and was out of intensive care, and convocation set in, and

the consultant in charge of my case was away on a lecture tour. --

complications set in. I had reached the point of exhaustion. I am a

fighter by nature, but at this point I took a conscious decision that

there was no point in fighting on. And that night I sort of left my

body, and started to travel towards a very warm, welcoming, bright

light. It was almost a sense of convergence as I travelled down that

journey, and I felt peaceful. You vividly remember this? Oh, indeed. I

heard you talk about chemical inducement or whether it is the

body's national reaction. -- natural reaction. I know I chose it was not

-- I chose that it was my time to go. I came to an expanse of water,

like a broad river. I was journeying across that, and there were people

whom I felt I should recognise but there was a welcome there, but I

could not identify anyone in particular. But I was still happily

allowing myself to go, and I felt, as I said, at one, whether it was an

eternal sense of well-being or whatever, I was more than happy to

go. But I had been involved in a difficult decision around the

challenge we had put in our community of young people, then

parish priest for the youth authority had -- should smack

facility should be open in the summer. -- the youth facility. I had

been up at the hospital ward supporting -- they had been

supporting me at the hospital ward in my recovery. From behind, I got a

sense of voices, quietly at first and then becoming louder. And you

really think this was the point at which you as a human being on this

planet was deciding whether to live or die? And you really think that

you were seeing yourself on the edge of leaving this planet, you could

see it yourself, on the other side? I was standing on the precipice of

making a decision of whether I was going on not going, and it was what

was occurring behind me started to get louder... I had to use a huge

energy to extract myself from that, I probably felt more exhausted

extracting myself from it because there was so much relief and welcome

to where I was going, but it was as if there was unfinished business.

Does that sound familiar? Yes, that is very commonly reported, and for

some people it is so comfortable where you are that you do not want

to come back. And there is a lot of guilt sometimes, because people who

have the experience are prepared to go where they are going and leave

their family and everything behind, so it is a very powerful experience.

Obviously the ball -- the bomb was mind blowing enough, but it must

change the way you look at the rest of your life. That is 37 years ago,

and I think it does change your outlook and you wonder why that

decision was made, I have four children, within the youth club we

had another challenge in rebuilding the facility buildings. We released

-- I managed a singer who wrote about peace and harmony, and that

was released. We are only scratching the surface of this tonight, but

thank you for coming in. Give our guests a round of applause.

That us move on. The Health Minister is considering making drink more

expensive. He says it is being sold at pocket money prices. Over 100

young people were treated for the effects of alcohol and drugs at a

gig in Belfast. We have been out on the streets of Belfast city centre

with a volunteer group. Things got kitty messy. -- pretty messy.

Street Pastors have seen lots of people who are intoxicated and need

help. If they are in a really bad way, we will bring the Ambulance

Service. All we will bring them to the SOS bus whether medics can be of

assistance to them. A couple of weeks ago, we came across a young

girl who was just lying in the street, nobody near her, her friends

had go home, we had to lift and carry her to the SOS. She was so

drunk, she could not tell us her name way she was from. It is all

about being caring for people and helping where we can. We have a rush

and dustpan and if we find broken glass, we remove it. It can be

dangerous with girls walking around in their bare feet. Your feet must

be freezing. We carry flip-flops to give to some of the jungles who

can't work -- walk around in their high heels. We can read or car,

bankers, people are very cold. We can help them to get warm until we

get them into a taxi and we get them home. Joining me to discuss this

here in the studio, let's start with you, David. It is for the government

to get a grip with this, intervene and stop people wasting themselves

to the point where they are endangering their own lives. It is

absolutely not for the government to interfere. To suggest that

government interference would have any meaningful impact is improbable.

You are suggesting that if the government get involved, puts up the

price of alcohol, that will magically stop the problem. But

since 2004, the comes -- consumption of alcohol in the UK has fallen by

12%. The 12% fall during the time of all these times of a legit cheap

drinks. -- allegedly treat drinks. -- cheap drinks. We have a problem

with no -- alcoholism in Northern Ireland. 284 people die of alcohol

related deaths in Northern Ireland a year and there is no outcry about

it. There are outcries about other issues. Where do we draw the line

with the nanny state getting involved in our lives to the extent

that we cannot do what we want to do with our own bodies. If we want to

get off and our head on drink, what is wrong with it? it imposes huge

costs on society, family costs, cost on the state. I am not suggesting

that we put up alcohol prices across the board. We are saying the minimum

price of alcohol is a very targeted measure and will deal with people

who abuse this. That is a contradiction and that is why it

goes tragically wrong. What you would do is affect the people who

had the least amount of money to be able to afford alcohol but who

wanted so those people with disposable income will reduce, they

will have less money for food and heat. so, we should sit back, let

people kill themselves, damage themselves, society, costs the NHS a

fortune? You are suggesting the magic wand is government, it is not,

it is people being responsible for what they do. Whistle when we saw

young people on the street, young fella here, go ahead. As a student,

if you want about with not much money, you need a low enough price

of alcohol so you can have a good time. Off-licences have a lot

cheaper things. Maybe a limited price in the off-licences but not in

the bar. You talk about people being responsible, I wonder if people in

the case of the miners, will they be responsible enough to refund the

taxpayer for the use they made of our emergency services? You could

say that about people who play sport, fat people like me and the

obesity crisis. Couldn't you? Where do you stop? I think there was a

certain recklessness. I don't Inc what you are doing or what the

sportspeople on the ring is reckless but if somebody is going with the

intention of ending up in the states that people are in, that is the

difference. I don't think it is the price of alcohol that affects how

much people drink. People will find a way to get drunk anyway. They will

go out one night instead of two and get twice as drunk. The Chief

Medical Officer of Northern Ireland disagrees with that. She says if you

do raise the price of alcohol, in England, it has been shown, he is

the man with the statistics, it really does have an impact. Let's

hear what he says. He was spelling out the pressures on the NHS. 12,000

admissions each year. 3000 people in treatment for alcohol addiction. 270

deaths directly related to alcohol in 2012, a 30% increase from 2001.

We know the economic costs are somewhere in the region of ?900

million each year. 250 million of that is to the health service. We

could employ 6000 new nurses, 20,000 operations. If we were in an ideal

world when no one wanted to drink, that would never happen. I am not

saying that. Alcohol is with us, it is part of society, but it is a

psychoactive drug and we need to ensure it is marketed and sold at a

price which reflects that. That is be to the chase, marketed at a price

that reflects that. People are advocating making it too expensive

for the ordinary person in the street. Nonsense. If you introduce a

50p minimum price of alcohol, that is the floor price so you are not

selling cheap spirits onto the market. That would bring about a 6.7

reduction of alcohol over ten years, it would save 3000 lives in

England over ten years and prevent 97,000 admissions to hospital. In

Northern Ireland, that would save us an equivalent of ?60 million each

and every day. But it would hit the people at the bottom the hard disk.

-- the hardest. A minimum price would not hurt the middle-class.

Tool in fact the people who -- it will impact the people who drink

alcohol to excess. We are storing up a generation of problems where young

people feel it is the social norm to preload before you go out to social

events. We have been talking about that problems within our accident

and emergency wards in particular but let us talk in general. How much

of the problem is alcohol directly linked to the waiting times and

problems in accident and emergency departments? Eight out of every ten

attendances are directly related to alcohol. Eight in every ten? Eight

in every ten at weekends and late into the evenings. I found that

statistic absolutely astonishing. You think of peak times at

weekends, eight out of every ten patients in A are alcohol related,

now tell me you should have the freedom to choose. Eight out of ten,

and you want people to be able to do what every -- whatever they want.

and I would have bought eight out of ten would have learned their lesson

the next day, hopefully. They are teenagers, they clicked too much,

they wake up with the worst hangover ever, most people do wake up and

behave properly. But we are paying for it. And people there through no

fault of their own art waiting. And we are all sitting back and saying,

some of us are laughing about it, it doesn't matter. That statistic goes

my mind. Eight out of ten. it doesn't take into account that

drinkers paid ?12 billion a year in taxation of the drinking and

supposedly it costs ?2 billion to treat people, so the state is

getting a return of six to one. Some people are irresponsible. Biking

your finger and making drinking more expensive is not necessarily make

these people behave any better. -- wagging your finger. In Sweden, the

Draconian laws, you cannot buy any alcohol stronger than 2.8% after six

o'clock in the evening... They are targeting people who are harmful

drinkers. Having a minimum price, you make it more expensive for

people who are abusing alcohol, it doesn't affect the vast bulk of

people and it doesn't affect the prices in the bars, it is the very

cheap alcohol... Reality contradicts that. In Norway, Finland, Denmark,

alcohol is extremely expensive. There are still people who binge

drink there. To suggest that you can add hook a binge drinker by

increasing the minimum price is not very logical. Watch worth doing is

damning all moderate drinkers, they are being punished. On the price of

alcohol issue, it is cheaper than it has been. And consumption has

dropped! I am a nondrinker and I think people from you drink should

have to pay for the privilege because the alcohol problem is and

issue in society, and issue in society, I would like to see taxes

taken from alcohol, taking taxes that pay for the fuel from my car

and put on alcohol. Rather than raise the minimum price of alcohol,

why not introduce a levy for someone who chooses the emergency services

in A? So if someone is seriously ill and can't afford to pay? No, if

someone is seriously drunk. The majority of young people between 18

and 24, the number of them drinking excessively in the last six years,

it has fallen. There are your facts, it is why it, it is dangerous, but

we cannot sit here sitting holier than thou, and say why do these

people do that? Start again. If you want to stop people who were over

drinking, you would stop letting people in the clubs when they are

drunk and stop serving them drinks. But they will go into off-licences,

they are preloading. Have you got drunk? Guess I have. But if I was

prevented from going into a club or if I wasn't served a drink, I

wouldn't do it again. If you can't go anywhere, you won't do it. You

lost your son following a drink -- a drinking binge, what do you think of

these drinking promotions? I think the government need to get involved,

building more hospitals for people that are getting drunk and drunk

every week. That is what I think. I see the clubs are selling 90p

drinks. It is actually going down. There is a lot of focus on one

particular club. There is nothing that hasn't happened in that in

every town in Northern Ireland, it just happened in a fairly large

scale that other night. There is an issue here with young people and

saying they should not be let in. Alcohol is cheaper now than it has

been for decades. Surely, it is about teaching young people they

don't need to get drunk. How did you do that? And education system,

trading skills. I think parents have a fundamental responsibility to

ensure that young people have an understanding of the damage alcohol

can do. The fact of the matter is, kids really today are no different

to the way they were when you and I were young. There is a parental

response that he and their business and responsibility in the individual

as well. On the minimum alcohol pricing, you put a minimum price on

alcohol, it will hit those who don't have much money in their pockets the

hardest, are we seriously suggesting the middle classes don't have a

drinking problem? And indeed the upper classes? Some of them are.

Absolutely. It is a cause and effect. The bottom line is is if you

do the crease the price of alcohol, which is what we have done over the

last few decades, consumption goes up. It has fallen. And you are

saying it is going up? It is going down. Hence why I am arguing for a

minimum price. We're only talking about three or 4% of the alcohol

sold in supermarkets today. It affects the people with the least

income. You drive people into poverty, how is that a good result?

We have 20 seconds left, let's continue this discussion on Twitter

right now. Tomorrow morning, you will hear the full interview from

the Chief Medical Officer on BBC Radio Ulster, tomorrow morning at

9am. Right now, give our guests around of applause. Thank you for

watching. Goodbye.