Alcohol consumption is up 17% in Ireland in just a decade, a Health Research Board survey showed.

Alcohol related deaths are up 100%. Liver disease is up 140%. The Irish drink 47% more than the EU average.

The HRB's Dr Deirdre Mongan described her board's findings as remarkable. What they show very clearly, she told the Examiner, "is that we need to reduce alcohol consumption in Ireland".

Nestled beside the Examiner's story on the drink survey was an equally depressing report about the World Cancer Research Fund's latest findings.

Translated into the vernacular, we are all going to hell in a hand basket; our very survival is being threatened by our own culinary choices.

The link between increased girth and an increased risk of cancer has now been established, just as the weight of the world is on the increase.

Red meat, excessive alcohol consumption and dairy products play a major role in causing cancer. Vegetables and fruits, for so long considered to be effective barriers against various cancers, might not be very effective at all, the Fund said.

All very gloomy, and all very familiar. I'm definitely drinking 17% more than I did 10 years ago, having joined half the rest of the country in the nightly ritual of half a bottle of wine and some Desperate Housewives. I have no idea whether I drink 47% more than an average 44-yearold in France or Italy, but I wouldn't be surprised. When my doctor asked me recently how many units of alcohol I drank in a week, the grand total came to more than 40. Twenty-eight is regarded as acceptable. She politely suggested that I cut down a bit.

Almost certainly as a result of the red wine, and the rest, my body mass index has risen to 29.5, a few plates of foie gras away from obesity. I am in no position to lecture anybody about their eating or drinking. I do not mean to do so today.

The Tanaiste Brian Cowen is in a slightly different position. As Friday's Irish Times opinion poll showed, we are in the last days of the Bertie Ahern era. He is what Eamon Dunphy used to call a beaten docket, his working class supporters finally having realised that he can no longer sustain the "man of the people" schtick he exploited for far too long. As his ship sinks, only (and ironically) the middle classes are supporting their wealthy captain in solid numbers.

It's clear that the succession battle is well and truly underway.

The Irish Times poll demonstrated that Cowen is, as the Taoiseach has mandated, the heir apparent. He is currently more popular than Ahern, more popular than any party leader.

Over the next few months, he will be hit by a level of intrusiveness and curiosity about his life and times that he has not yet experienced.

And inevitably, some of that attention will focus in on the fact that, like so many of the Irish electorate, he likes a drink or two.

Such attention has already started, with various references to his alcohol consumption finding their way into the papers.

Amongst political reporters, Cowen has a reputation as somebody who can hold a pint, and there has never been a suggestion that his drinking has affected either his performance as a minister or his personality. (The bad mood seems to come naturally). The question therefore is whether his sociability, to put it no more strongly than that, should become an issue, as it has started to do.

As it happened, Cowen was on duty in the Dail on Thursday when the Health Research Board's survey was the subject of a question from the Labour Party's Joanna Tuffy.

Having dealt with the imminence of legislation on the advertising of and sponsorship by drinks companies, the Tanaiste went on to say: "I take the deputy's point that alcohol abuse, as we see in that report, has long-term and short-term consequences for the health of the nation.

It requires constant vigilance on our part to implement alcohol policies which lead to responsible drinking and avoid abuse.

"Unfortunately, we have seen recently what many would regard as irresponsible behaviour from a cohort of people, particularly at weekends. Responsible ministers in various areas will have to take the matter on board and respond more effectively."

The key word in there for Cowen is responsible, which he used twice, and which prompts a number of questions. Does the Tanaiste regard himself as one of those responsible ministers? What does he believe is a responsible level of drink? One pint a night? Two pints? Half a bottle of wine? Whatever you're having yourself?

Does he believe that his drinking is at a responsible level? Or does he believe, despite the fact that he makes statements about alcohol abuse in the Dail, that he was once the Minister for Health and that by this time next year, he may well have ultimate responsibility for the cabinet's anti-alcohol drive, that what he consumes is nobody's business but his own?

That argument works for a private citizen. How much somebody wants to eat or drink is up to them and the state has no business interfering in their choice, no matter how daft it may seem. Of course, if their behaviour puts others at risk (through driving while drunk, for example), the state then has a very obvious obligation to intervene.

Cowen is not a private citizen and will become even less private over the next 12 months as the Fianna Fail leadership battle gathers momentum.

Twenty years ago, his drinking might have gone unremarked, but we live in different times, and you can be sure that at least one newspaper is currently considering the merits of making it an election issue. If Bertie Ahern can get away with treating the Mahon Tribunal as though it were an extension of the Jackanory studio, then Cowen should survive a fuss about doing what many of the rest of us do on a regular basis. He might even benefit from it. But he might also benefit from addressing the issue soon before it becomes too big to handle.