Dr. Helen McAvoy:

I wish to pick up on a comment the Chairman made about the European regulations. They are the European Union (Manufacture, Presentation and Sale of Tobacco and Related Products) Regulations which were transposed into Irish law in 2016 with subsequent amendments in later years. They require notification of the product contents, safety and quality requirements and labelling indicating the product contains nicotine which is highly addictive. There are also some provisions on marketing and advertising, including the stipulation that no medium should be used to advertise e-cigarettes if more than 25% of the audience is under 18. Many countries have not only transposed that directive but have gone beyond it in their own domestic legislation relating to these products.

While, of course, we need to be aligned with Europe and transpose the directives, there is always scope to go further in our own domestic legislation. Given the extent of the difficulties in getting consensus between European countries' governments, the extent of lobbying and all the things that happen at European level, marking to the European level is probably the minimum that any country can do. There is certainly scope for Ireland to go beyond that.

This legislation came in just before the pandemic. The health system and many other Government systems have been overwhelmed and engaged in responding to that. We have not really had any independent report on Ireland's compliance with the European tobacco directive. We need to think about whether Ireland is fully compliant with that European regulation as stated. We also need to ask whether the European directive is enough for what we want to do in Ireland where we have a target for a tobacco-free Ireland by 2025.