Ms Sharon Higgins:

Again, as I indicated in my presentation, tobacco companies are members of IBEC. Equally, I made clear that we support the Minister's and committee's objective of protecting public health. The key point we wanted to make is that our concerns are around the intellectual property, IP, rights of all companies in Ireland.

This is an important part of how we portray Ireland and how our reputation internationally is seen. We ranked tenth best in the world for IP rights on the IMD 2013 competitiveness scorecard. That is an important part of how we attract industry, business, investment and innovation to Ireland. The purpose of our attendance is to request respectfully that a full regulatory impact assessment, RIA, be performed in order for us to be able to look at the evidence.

With regards to the Australian question, the evidence is mixed. We would like that to be included as part of the RIA. Our members have concerns around activity that relates to the current IP situation in Ireland, which is positive from an industrial growth perspective. We would like to see the evidence and we would be happy to look at it at that point.