{"id":504215,"date":"2026-06-17T11:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T11:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/504215\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T11:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T11:07:10","slug":"irish-alcohol-guidelines-may-change-as-hiqa-consider-new-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/504215\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish alcohol guidelines may change as HIQA consider new research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Irish drinking guidelines could need to be changed.<\/p>\n<p>The Health Information and Quality Authority says guidance on what constitutes low-risk alcohol consumption may need to be reconsidered due to the latest research available.<\/p>\n<p>Right now, the HSE says low-risk drinking is fewer than 11 standard drinks for women and 17 standard drinks a week for men.<\/p>\n<p>A standard unit is half a pint of beer, one small glass of wine, or one pub measure of spirits.<\/p>\n<p>However, HIQA says there is now no strong basis for the gender-specific thresholds, and the difference in risk between men and women is minimal.<\/p>\n<p>It maintains that there is a substantial amount of risk associated with even low levels of alcohol consumption.<\/p>\n<p>It says Irish guidelines on what constitutes low-risk alcohol consumption may need to be reconsidered based on the latest research, and there is no risk-free level of alcohol consumption. How weekly drinks are consumed and over how many days is also important.<\/p>\n<p>According to the report, between 2022 and 2024, alcohol was estimated to account for an average of 1,420 deaths per year, and 27,066 hospital admissions.<\/p>\n<p>Hiqa said the estimated difference in risk between sexes was minimal, suggesting there is no strong basis for sex-specific thresholds.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"not-prose no-underline\" data-action=\"click\" data-category=\"Read more article clicked\" data-label=\"https:\/\/www.breakingnews.ie\/ireland\/over-40-people-to-appear-in-court-in-relation-to-dublin-shoplifting-1914661.html\" data-value=\"1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.breakingnews.ie\/ireland\/over-40-people-to-appear-in-court-in-relation-to-dublin-shoplifting-1914661.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>        <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/cc-dun-laoghaire-district-court002-e1716451708560.jpg\" class=\"rounded-sm object-contain bg-transparent z-10 w-full h-full not-prose\" alt=\"Over 40 People To Appear In Court In Relation To Dublin Shoplifting\" width=\"278\" height=\"156\" \/><\/p>\n<p>        Ireland<\/p>\n<p>Over 40 people to appear in court in relation to Dublin shoplifting<\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The report states that the pattern of alcohol consumption also has an impact, with concentrated levels of drinking across fewer days of the week bringing a higher risk.<\/p>\n<p>However, across both men and women, harm is not restricted to the heaviest drinkers. More than half of alcohol-attributable deaths occurred among the 90 per cent of drinkers with the lowest levels of consumption.<\/p>\n<p>A \u201csubstantial amount\u201d of risk occurred among people drinking lower levels of alcohol, indicating that Irish low-risk alcohol guidelines may need to be reconsidered to accurately highlight the risk at lower levels of alcohol consumption, the report said.<\/p>\n<p>As part of a pilot project BreakingNews.ie has used AI to suggest headline options for this article. The final headline was chosen and edited by BreakingNews.ie journalists.\u00a0<a class=\"Hyperlink SCXW633642 BCX0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.breakingnews.ie\/ai-at-breakingnews-ie\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Find out more<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irish drinking guidelines could need to be changed. The Health Information and Quality Authority says guidance on what&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-504215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}