Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

While we wait on Deputy Crowe, I will ask a few questions. The elephant in the room is the difficulty in giving up cigarettes. I was struck by something that a group that appeared before us last week said about advertisements and how films used to portray smokers as sophisticated, cool and so on. Perhaps I am missing it, but I am not seeing the same happening with vaping. I do not see many people vaping in films or the like. They are still probably smoking. There was some suggestion that films that predated the bans have the smoking parts censored.

After the meeting, I remembered when I was in a hospital bed in a cancer ward. The majority of the people there had throat cancer. One guy was called Johnny. Johnny's whole day was spent on how he would get out to have a cigarette. I woke up one night and Johnny's head was sticking out the window. It was -4°C or -5°C, there was white frost on the window and Johnny was smoking in his pyjamas. Every day from the time he got up, he talked about how he was going to get out. Would the nurse bring him? Would someone else bring him? As I mentioned last week, I am aware of people who have lost limbs from smoking. Giving up is not that easy. If we are going to get the Johnnys of the world off cigarettes, we must consider everything. That is probably the point that is being made in respect of vaping.

The witnesses touched on an idea on which I would like them to expand. We understand passive smoking. Going back to the hospital scene, the smoke was blowing back in. How much evidence is there that the "passive smoking" effect of e-cigarettes impacts negatively on people's health? If there is much evidence, the logic is that we need to move and legislate. Will the witnesses expand on this point?