Mr. Joe Sweeney:

I thank the committee for the invitation to address it on the Public Health (Standardised Packaging of Tobacco) Bill 2013.

I am president of the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, NFRN, in Ireland. Founded in 1919, it is one of Europe’s largest retail trade associations, and it has 16,000 members throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. The Irish branch of the federation is a membership-driven organisation that represents 1,000 retailers across the island of Ireland, including 500 stores in the Republic.

We support any initiative to safeguard the health of the people of the country. In this statement, I will draw attention to some of our members’ views and concerns. I will address briefly remarks made at the committee’s hearing last week by a representative of the Irish Heart Foundation, who casually dismissed the concerns of retailers on the likely impact of this legislation as being of no merit. Retailers are an aid to the Department of Health as they are the people who enforce the Government’s policies. I was heartened to hear Deputy Regina Doherty's remark that retailers provide employment for both themselves and others, and this should be recognised by the committee. Equally important was Deputy Byrne’s comment that it is all about education. This is a sentiment with which I completely agree. I have four adult sons and neither they nor I nor my wife smoke despite our having access every day to our stock of tobacco. When my children were teenagers and at the most likely age to start smoking, it was still legal to smoke in the workplace and the cigarette gantries displayed the tobacco brand. Despite this and my sons’ ease of access, they did not start, simply because they were made aware of and educated on the dangers of smoking. They chose not to smoke as opposed to having the choice made for them and rebelling against it.

NFRN Ireland and I are not in any way in favour of smoking. Our members are at the front line of legal, heavily regulated tobacco retailing. It is offensive to me and other retailers that there is an incorrect and arrogant assumption that our questioning of this Bill is somehow a defence of the tobacco industry. We are trying to protect our own business interests and while the product remains legal we expect to be recognised as responsible retailers who are competing with a criminal underworld. We ask the Government to support and protect our businesses and the jobs they represent and acknowledge that criminals will sell an illegal product to children; the product is often sold by children to children. As supporters of Government policies, we ask for support in return.

NFRN Ireland contests and disputes the sentiment that plain packaging would reduce the appeal of tobacco and tobacco products as they are not on display here in the first instance due to the display ban. It is difficult to understand how the appeal of a brand can attract a smoker when the product is not visible to him or her and the impulse purchase that might have been prompted by the sight of a product does not occur.

There is no hard evidence to suggest that oversized health warnings or plain packaging will reduce the number of people currently smoking or those who start to smoke. The only supposed evidence from Australia, given to this committee during the hearings to date, has been the tenuous argument that increased calls to a quit-line mean people will actually stop smoking. What the people who mentioned this study failed to point out was that it was undertaken during December and January, a time of year when calls to quit-lines would be expected to increase in any case as smokers make their new year’s resolutions.

Some organisations the members have heard from dismiss our contention that plain packaging will lead to increased illicit trade. If that is so, how do they explain the surge in illicit tobacco sales in Australia in the year since plain packaging was introduced there? Furthermore, the tobacco products directive agreement reached at EU level will give the Department of Health all of the powers needed to tackle cigarette packaging. It will bring in measures such as the devotion of 65% of cigarette packets to health warnings and the outlawing of packaging that the Minister for Health, Deputy James Reilly, has said is aimed at attracting young people, such as what he described as lipstick-shaped packs.

I want to summarise the key recommendations that NFRN Ireland would like this committee to consider. The first is that the Government should promote and endorse the use of electronic cigarettes as a weaning tool for those who wish to give up smoking. It is essential that these products remain on general sale and are never restricted to pharmacies. In order to increase the likelihood of a smoker choosing an alternative, an alternative must be readily available. The long opening hours of our members’ stores support this.

Second, education is the key. Through education, young people can make informed choices and avoid taking up a dangerous habit. NFRN Ireland urges the committee to examine the example of California and introduce a programme similar to tobacco use prevention education, TUPE, which resulted in a dramatic decrease in the number of teenagers who started to smoke. The emphasis should be on stopping people from starting to smoke.

Third, NFRN Ireland has on many occasions highlighted the serious level of illicit trade in Ireland. We have put forward a number of potential solutions to various Oireachtas committees, Deputies, Senators and councillors. We submitted a proposal to the Minister of State responsible for small business, Deputy John Perry, on developing a smartphone app, based on the Codentify software, that will allow consumers to verify that their tobacco products are legitimate. The Garda representatives who were present here two weeks ago spoke positively about this. Where there is a suspicion that tobacco products are counterfeit or smuggled, such an app would provide law-enforcement officials with a simple and effective tool for determining immediately whether this is the case. NFRN Ireland would be willing to pay for the introduction of this app to the Irish market.

Fourth, the sale of tobacco products at a market or fair should be banned outright. To this end, the penalties available under the Casual Trading Act should be made as strict as those which apply under the Finance Acts. Equally, landlords of properties where illicit products are sold should be held accountable for the activity on their sites in the same way as retailers are held accountable.

Fifth, as Ireland is an island, ports offer an easy means of bringing illicit tobacco into the country. In Ireland there are eight ports but in only two are there mobile scanners, meaning that the majority of ports remain unmanned. In all ports there should be a permanent scanner and such an investment would not only be self-financing but also profitable for the Exchequer.

These are all measures which NFRN Ireland believes the joint committee should consider carefully as part of an integrated approach to tackling the issue of tobacco control across a range of fronts, rather than pursuing one single, unproven, high profile step such as plain packaging.