Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am a mother of five children, two of whom smoke and with whom I have a constant battle to give up cigarettes. My role as a member of this committee is to listen and learn, and to be educated about medical and well being issues that affect the people we represent. After that, my role is to respond to observations and give my own life's opinion, because that is why I am here. I could repeat many of the questions that have already been asked, but I will just ask one or two more instead. As to the argument whether there are 970,000 or 750,000 smokers here, everybody in this room has said that over 5,000 people die every year through illnesses related to smoking. That is a very important figure for the witnesses to keep in their heads. Have any of them ever visited the respiratory unit of any hospital across the country? Have any of them ever walked in and saw the effect, not only on the patient in the bed, but the effect on the families and friends around the patient? It is unreal.

The witnesses claim that they do not target children. They said that smoking is an adult thing to do. What about the 21% of adults - young women - who smoke during their pregnancies? Does that not target the unborn child? I believe that it does, and 50% of those children end up seriously ill in respiratory units in perinatal clinics. A great number of stillbirths result from that as well.

If any of the witnesses have children, would they hand an 18 year old a packet of cigarettes and tell them to smoke them because they will not do them any harm? Looking at my 31 year old and my 21 year old at home, and having buried family members who smoked through their lives, I am not convinced at all that anything said today is marketable. I would not like to be in their job. Being a politician is a very difficult job, but I would not like to be in any of the witnesses' shoes, because they are marketing people out there to kill themselves. As for Mr. Mallon, I hope he brings some of his members into the accident and emergency in St. James's Hospital, particularly into the respiratory unit. I guarantee that he will give up smoking the next day.