Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome that statement by the Minister. Even outside the considerations of Brexit, there is an issue here. If the statistics show that illegally consumed cigarettes, purchased outside the jurisdiction, have increased by roughly 3% and illicit cigarettes by 2% in the same period, it is a 5% increase but revenue for 2019 seems to be stable, to within €30 million of what was predicted. That suggests that not a huge amount of people have been deterred from smoking. A 5% reduction should equate to a revenue drop but it could be argued that there is more smoking now. We need to know whether the policy is having an effect on either legally or illegally consumed cigarettes so while MRBI is carrying out polling on where people purchase tobacco products, we also need to know whether the price increase in recent years has acted to reduce smoking. I would imagine it has but I have not seen the figures to prove it. That is the policy objective and if it is not happening, we are just dealing with a revenue issue.

As important as that may be, it is secondary to the policy objective.