Dr. Patrick Doorley:

With regard to plain packaging, I do not want to repeat what other witnesses have said; suffice it to say that owing to the Clinton settlement with the tobacco industry in the 1990s, many previously secret documents had to be published by the industry. Tobacco executives are on record as saying a package is an advertising medium. They believe this very strongly.

The two systematic reviews I mentioned cover over 50 studies. We cannot get into these now but I find their evidence very compelling. We will just have to evaluate the arrangement when we put it in place.

There is a point in the effort to improve public health at which one must make a decision based on the level of evidence. We are past that point now. The proposal will remove the last vestiges of advertising, apart from Internet advertising, of tobacco in the State. That is good.

Regarding the other steps we need to take, this Bill will be very powerful. One Bill can achieve only so much, however. Where tackling the smoking problem overall is concerned, there is no intervention that will be successful on its own; there is no magic bullet. What we need is a suite of interventions and strong policy measures coupled with other measures. The World Health Organization has listed what it considers to be the five or six most effective measures. Examples include the monitoring of tobacco use, the monitoring of the tobacco companies and prevalence, and offering help to those who want to quit. The latter is extremely important and we need to offer more help. People sometimes need to make six or seven attempts before they quit, and they need to be supported in that. Many people can quit without support but the health service needs to support those who need help.