Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Tully, her colleague Deputy Cullinane, who tabled the amendment, Deputy Shortall and Deputy Lahart. The amendment before us proposes a review of the implementation of the Act, which is a good idea. This is really important legislation. In this Bill we are doing something that is urgent, which is banning the sale of vaping products, e-cigarettes, to children. We are also bringing in various other controls for tobacco, such as a licensing system, vending machines and so forth. It is an important Bill and we need to know what its impact is. I believe this will have an important public health benefit, especially for children and younger adults.

I am in agreement with the benefit of having a review. I cannot accept the amendments before us. I will outline why and then I would like to offer an alternative. Some of the amendments call for a review within 12 months, which we do. It is a standard thing we sometimes put into legislation. Parts of this Bill will be commenced immediately, including the sale of vapes to children. As soon as this legislation is signed by the President, I will be signing an order making it illegal to sell vapes to children. We will do that right away. We are on Committee Stage now. We need to complete Report Stage and I am hoping to get the Bill into the Seanad as quickly as possible and to have it into law as quickly as possible.

Other parts of the Bill will take time to commence. For example, for the first time we are putting in place a rigorous licensing system, and we will come to that later. At the moment, a person only needs a once-off €50 fee and it covers as many shops as they want. We are fundamentally changing that. There will be a licensing system. The costs will be significantly higher and it will be for every single retail outlet. Obviously, we need to put a licensing system in place and we need to work with retailers to make sure that happens. Some of the pieces of that will take time and will need to be done in consultation with the retailers who will need to implement all this.

On the public health benefits of this, as I know colleagues are aware, the kinds of public health benefits we will see will typically take more than a year. It is hoped we will immediately see a reduction in sales to children and consumption by children. The advice I have is that we need to give it a bit more time to get a rounded evaluation of the public health benefits.

On the evidence base for calculating fees outlined in amendment No. 1, the fees are yet to be determined. That is under consideration and, ultimately, whoever the Minister is will set the fees. As colleagues will be aware, pricing of tobacco products is kept under constant review anyway, as per the financial resolutions we just passed applying increased tax on them.

Amendment No. 9 seeks a report on the costs of smoking cessation supports. Providing an update to the committee is something I can undertake to do now. I can ask officials to provide an update anyway. We do not need to wait for this. The good news is that, over recent years, we have introduced many of these controls. For example, two years ago, in 2021, funding for smoking cessation was €13.2 million and the following year, 2022, it went from €13.2 million to €15.7 million, which is a very significant increase. In February of this year, the HSE announced the roll-out of free stop smoking medication, for example, nicotine replacement therapy for anyone who engages in the smoking cessation programmes. As part of last year's budget for this year, we removed VAT on nicotine replacement therapies, again reducing the cost of the products for people who want to stop smoking. I recently approved the inclusion of nicotine replacement therapies in the drugs payment scheme. I propose we give an update to the committee on these measures. The smoking cessation measures are certainly already in place.

To the point on a review, I agree we need a review but it needs to be longer than a six- or 12-month time period. I would be interested in feedback on the following. I suggest to colleagues that I will bring an amendment on Report Stage, reflecting what has been said, but putting a three-year time limit on it. I do not mind what the time limit is but we need to pick one that gives enough time for the various parts of the Act to have been implemented and then enough time for us to be able to evaluate that. I am open to what colleagues think the right time is but I am sure 12 months is too early. It could be three, four or two and a half years; I do not mind. We just need to leave a bit of time.

I was going to cover this later but the following point has been raised. I commend the committee on its work on pre-legislative scrutiny on this Bill. I assure colleagues the recommendations were gone through in a lot of detail. I am bringing another Bill through which will come down very hard on vapes. There is predatory advertising going on and I am not remotely satisfied with the packaging and the way it is clearly done to make it attractive to young people and children. I am not at all happy with the disposable vapes and their environmental impact and public health risks, some of which we have seen in the UK in terms of the contents of some of these single-use vapes. I am not happy with the packaging or flavouring either, and these issues have been raised by the committee. We are about to start a public consultation on these issues, which is due to start on 7 November. We will listen carefully to that and we have listened carefully to the committee and taken all of that on board. We will then move quickly to produce heads of a Bill and those heads will come back to this committee in pre-legislative scrutiny.

Let us be clear: in this Bill we will make it illegal to sell vaping products to children. The reason I am not putting all of the other measures in this Bill is that, the moment I do so, we are back into an EU process whereby we have to notify the EU before it comes back to us and the process takes time. I am not willing to wait six months, 12 months or however long it might take for those notifications. We need to make it illegal to sell e-cigarettes and vapes to children now. We will bring this Bill through and we have already started the work on adding significant additional restrictions on disposable vapes, on which I would like to see a complete ban; flavouring, where we should bring it down to a limited set, and we are looking at some countries that have tobacco flavour and other countries that have tobacco flavour plus something else; packaging, on which we want clear restrictions so it is not seen as something that is quite cynically targeting children and young people, which is exactly what it is doing; and, critically, one of the issues I really object to and which I note the committee's comments on, which is points of sale. If you walk into a petrol station or newsagent, you are bombarded with all of these bright colours and packaging around the vapes. Just like we did with alcohol and smoking, we need point-of-sale bans as well.