John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairman and the Minister. I apologise to the Minister for my apparent inattention. I meant no disrespect by my late arrival. I misunderstood the Order of Business and thought we would debate the health insurance Bill for longer. I had wanted to make a contribution on that legislation too, but more anon.

As sponsors of the Bill, we have taken the unusual step of bringing forward Committee Stage amendments that reflect two issues. First, we are cognisant of the public and welcome the support the Minister gave us when we debated the legislation on Second Stage. It gave us a great boost to our morale, as legislators, that the Government accepted back bench Opposition legislation on merit, a procedure that is somewhat unusual in this Parliament. I am truly very grateful to the Minister for doing so. We wanted the opportunity to debate it again with him and that is one of the reasons for advancing amendments at this stage. Our interaction with the rest of the health service has been less productive in respect of the Bill in the 20-odd months since we first proposed the legislation on First and Second Stages in the House, back in May 2012.

I could go through a turgid recitation of the various meetings that have taken place. There have been many but I will just bring one to the Minister's attention. The most recent formal meeting took place a year ago and was with the most senior authorities in the Department of Health. At that time we were promised we would have what they called the heads of the Bill, which I believe was their way of tabling Committee Stage amendments, by the end of January 2013. That was almost one year ago and nothing has happened. Since then it has been indicated that the Minister's very welcome plain packaging Bill has a higher priority. He will find strong support from me and I suspect across the House for his legislation. However, there was not a great degree of resources or attention put into passing our legislation. We believe the Protection of Children's Health from Tobacco Smoke Bill is relatively simple legislation that would give the Minister a quick win in terms of passing a law to advance tobacco control.

The Minister mentioned concerns in his Second Stage speech in the House about what he described as serious flaws in the Bill, but we were delighted that he was prepared to advance the legislation to Committee Stage in order that we could avail of the expertise in the various Departments to correct, amend and strengthen the Bill and ensure it was passed. When we first met after the Second Stage in May 2012 with several of the Minister's colleagues with responsibility for tobacco control, concerns were expressed about constitutional issues, such as whether one could smoke in a private place and things like that, although that concern seems to have been dismissed fairly quickly. There was a substantial amount of technical comment on issues related to how the Garda would enforce the Bill because, ultimately, it is its members who must enforce the legislation. Our amendments today address that by incorporating a reference to the Bill in the Road Traffic Act and allowing the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport to introduce fixed charges as she or he sees fit in terms of the enforcement of the Bill. We also needed to go into some detail about fines and how they would be codified, and that is dealt with in our amendments. There was a question that perhaps the European technical standards directive would be invoked, but the opinion is that it would not. There was a feeling that the Bill, once passed, could be commenced relatively quickly.

I am not getting at the Minister about this but I want to give him a brief time line, and I will not name names.

May 3: Publication, introduction.
May 9: Second Stage.
May 18: Meeting with senior Department of Health officials.
May 25: Telephone call with senior Department of Health officials.
May 29: Meeting with senior Department of Health officials.
June 2012: Meeting with senior Department of Health officials.
E-mails sent on July 16 with proposed amendments not answered.
E-mails sent on August 22. No answer, no voice mail left.
August 22: Further e-mail sent to relevant official.
August 12: Telephone call. No answer. Left voice mail.
August 27: Telephone calls. No answer.
October 4: E-mail finally received, again with a commitment to expeditious processing.
November 1: Further e-mail from me to the Minister outlining my concern over the delays.
November 2: Response from official; still nothing happening.
November 21: E-mail from official to one of my co-sponsors; again no particular action happening.
December 12: E-mail back confirming that the Department of Justice and Equality had made observations.
December 21, almost one year ago: Meeting in Hawkins House with very senior officials of the Department of Health. Told the Bill is a priority and we would see action by 30 January 2013. Nothing.
March 26: E-mails seeking clarification. March 26: E-mail back; will reply once the AG considers it in detail.
April 8: further advice being sought from AG.
April 10: An attempt to set up another meeting. Three months after the deadline I wish we would be told that we had the guidelines available to us.
April 24: Further meeting.
June 25: E-mail sent. Telephone call to official - no answer. Left voice mail.
June 27: E-mail from official later; would contact AG's office at some unspecified date.
July 1: E-mail from official, AG's office. Will update her later that week.
July 17: More feedback required from AG.
September 17: At this stage we are getting up to a real-time account of it.

I believe that with a little action by the Executive the Minister has the status, clout, authority and the interest to make this happen.
We are proposing a number of amendments on Committee Stage we believe address many of the technical concerns the Minister described as constituting serious flaws with the Bill. Some of us are new to this business but we are prepared to take on board any of the advice the Minister has to offer to strengthen the Bill.

It was the intent when the Bill was proposed that the summer of 2012 would be a time when children, legislatively, would have been protected during the summer holiday period from the consequences of adults smoking in cars with them. That did not happen. I then hoped it would happen in time for the summer of 2013; it has not. Let us please not delay it any further than this.

If I may I will turgidly recite some of the reasons for that because in the aftermath of last night's events, the right wing, pseudo-libertarian, pseudo-free speech lobby are in full thunder crowing and gloating over their victory for free speech and against the nanny state. I am not a great believer in the nanny state but I will make a few comments on why the nanny state is important in this regard. It is beyond controversy that there is an increase in the incidence of asthma and bronchitis as a result of second-hand smoke. It is well understood that there is a unique peril associated with the level of tobacco smoke and its chemical constituent in the small confines of a car. The data are clear that when one cigarette is smoked the level of particulates is 30 times higher for a child in a car than the level the Environmental Protection Agency would be ringing sirens telling people to get off the streets, go into their houses and close the windows. It is 30 times higher yet it is still legally possible for a child to be subjected to that.

The exposure after one hour in a car with smokers is the same as that which a fire woman or fireman would experience in four to eight hours of fighting a bush fire. The emissions are five times higher from a cigarette smoked in the car than from the tail pipe of the car during the period in which smoking one cigarette would take place. One hour spent in a smoky car produces the same occupational exposure as eight hours in a smoky pub which, thankfully, only a few of us have memories of due to the inspired action of one of the Minister's predecessors, the then Minister, Deputy Micheál Martin, action we hope the Minister will emulate with a series of innovative anti-smoking measures.

The question has arisen as to whether this problem exists. The advocacy groups, the pseudo-civil libertarians who envelope themselves in the cloak of libertarianism, state that sensible, responsible parents will not do this anyway and therefore the nanny state does not need to legislate. The evidence is all around us that sadly, parents do it although they do not do it very often.

The real reason for this Bill is its educational value. It has had an educational value because I personally cannot recall any public debate ever taking place in this country on the scale of the Second Stage debate on the issue of smoking in cars with children. Suddenly, it was an issue people discussed, and it gives that powerful bully pulpit to children themselves because they hear the arguments and they say, "Mammy, don't be smoking" or "Daddy, don't be smoking".

For all these reasons it is critically important that we deal with this small, tight, focused Bill. We have done the heavy lifting for the Departments of Health and Justice and Equality. We introduced the amendments. Can we get a commitment that we will get this Bill passed quickly? We can then join in a full embrace with the Minister in his other great anti-smoking initiatives we would like to support.

After three years of this Government the score card in terms of anti-smoking legislation - this is not a dig at anybody - is as follows: considered four Bills, rejected one last night, promise of another one - the plain packaging Bill - next year. We are still turgidly gluing the smoking in cars Bill through a treacly bureaucracy nearly two years later, and the only Bill that has been passed is the one that makes it easier to sell cheap cigarettes to children and other adults. I know that is not something the Minister wanted; it was enforced on him by inappropriate actions of external agencies from without the State that put him under judicial and commercial pressure to do this but. Sadly, however, that is the track record. Let us start by fixing it today.

I am not sure if we will have an opportunity to speak as we go through the Bill.