Ms Averil Power:

It is self-evident to us also that those flavours and the packets Mr. Macey highlighted earlier are clearly directed at children. The Irish Cancer Society and the Irish Heart Foundation also undertook research. We consulted young people on this, showed them the packets and marketing and asked them if they believed the advertising and product design were aimed at them. They very strongly believed they were. They believed it mimicked sweets that are popular among their age groups. They are also seeing influencers on social media promoting vaping. They believe the marketing is very much aimed at them and not at their parents or grandparents.

I cannot talk for the officials but we know from the contributions they made to the committee previously there is a view that vaping can be helpful as a cessation aid. We would say that is not the mainstream view internationally. There is a minority view from Public Health England, to which the officials referred, but its view on this is very much an outlier internationally and it is not the view of the World Health Organization, The Lancet, the European Respiratory Society or the US surgeon general. The body of evidence on this internationally is that vaping is not effective as a cessation tool, that it is no more effective than the existing nicotine replacement therapy, NRT, tools we have and that there are risks with vaping that are not associated with the other forms of NRT, as Mr. Macey mentioned with respect to the health effects of vaping. Another problem is that people move from smoking to vaping but then they never quit vaping. There is an ongoing nicotine addiction with vaping that people do not have if they move from smoking to other forms of NRT. For that reason, having reviewed the evidence, we do not recommend vaping.

The Department previously put much stock into getting the Health Research Board to research this issue. We note the Health Research Board, having done a systematic review of international evidence came out strongly stating it could not recommend vaping. I quoted Dr. Jean Long from the Health Research Board in my opening statement as having called for the same regulation for e-cigarettes as for tobacco products. While I cannot speak for the officials, I believe it is their genuine view with respect to regulating e-cigarettes in the way we have called for young people. They have told us some adults like strawberry flavour. That is fine but by not tackling those kinds of flavours, e-cigarette products are being made more attractive to children. While some people might like the different flavours, if somebody is used to tobacco flavour, does he or she really need the enticement of fruit flavours to move to vaping? We just do not accept that. We can only bring an evidence-based view to the committee and ask the members to listen to us. Our only agenda in the Irish Cancer Society is to stop people getting cancer and to do everything we can to help smokers to quit. The same is true of the Irish Heart Foundation and international bodies which are urging action on this. We are not asking Ireland to be at the vanguard of this. As I said in my opening statement, we are well behind our European partners and we need to play catch-up and protect our young people before it is too late.