A major international conference on alcohol policy is to be held in Ireland next year, it has been announced

The 2020 Global Alcohol Policy Conference will take place in Dublin next March. It is run by the Global Alcohol Policy Alliance (GAPA), which is a network of non-governmental organisations and people working in public health agencies who share information on alcohol issues and advocate evidence-based alcohol policies, free from commercial interests.

The theme of next year's event will be ‘Alcohol equity and global health: the benefit of alcohol control for sustainable development for all'. The last conference was held in Melbourne, Australia, in 2017.

According to the Minister for Health, Simon Harris, this event will provide ‘an excellent opportunity to reinforce the public health message about alcohol and to share best practice from across the world on addressing this important issue'.

"We know that we have a relationship with alcohol in this country that is not good, damages our health, harms our communities and harms many families. While we have made significant advances in this regard, we have a lot more we can do and this conference can help us continue to make advances in this area," he insisted.

The event will take place from March 9-11, 2020.