Dr. Bobby Smyth:

There are recommendations about reducing advertising as well but unfortunately the committee with responsibility for communications will be lobbied by RTE which will worry about the financial impact on it. The committee responsible for finance will worry about the impact an increase in excise duty will have on inflation. Any committee which looks narrowly at the stakeholders for which it has primary responsibility has nothing to gain from this. Unfortunately the problem is global. It impinges on every aspect of society. Each sector of society is probably going to have to take a bit of pain to get the broader benefit.

Deputy Harrington asked where the money will go. The tobacco industry spends as much on the marketing and promotion of its products now as it ever did. It just does it in a different way. Marketing will not go away but marketers will not be given direct access to our homes via sports sponsorship. It will become less convenient, more expensive and less efficient for the companies to market alcohol. I will use a brief anecdote to illustrate this. I asked my eight year old son to name a cigarette brand, and I encourage the committee members to do likewise if they want evidence that bans do work. He could not name any and suggested we Google it, despite the fact that his mother smokes cigarettes. I asked him to name any brands of alcohol. The first two to trip off his little lips were Guinness and Heineken. He struggled beyond that.