Mr. Chris Macey:

Much of the publicity on that in the past was driven by the tobacco industry and its lobbying. It was deliberately over-estimating both the scale and the impact of smuggling in an effort to stop Governments putting up the price of cigarettes each year, in other words, to get that money going into its coffers rather than into the State's coffers. What has happened over the past six or seven years is that research showed smuggling reduced from around 16% down to around 10% or 11%. Now it is creeping back up again to around 14% or 15%. It is still there, it is still an issue and it needs to be dealt with so the impact of those tax increases is registered in terms of reduced consumption particularly among young people. The Deputy is right in that there is not as much said about it now because the industry is not using it as one of its lobbying tools at the moment.