Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank members for sharing their views. I am not going to slow down banning vapes for children. It is a simple reality, however, that if we were to bring in some of the measures today or in this Bill around flavours, disposables and point of sale, which I will be bringing in and it is great to hear there will be support in this regard, we would delay banning vapes for children by at least six months. We all know the legislative process can take longer than that. I am not going to do anything that slows down banning vapes for children. I wish to be very clear about this point.

I hope the committee members accept this and support it in the context of me telling them that a second Bill is already under development and a public consultation on it will be launching in a matter of weeks. We will be coming down hard on the issues we have all raised and agree on. I refer to point-of-sale, flavouring, packaging, disposables and potentially other issues raised here. I will, however, not slow down banning the sale of vapes to children. I am not doing it. I do not believe that any of the members here, in reality, would want me to do it. Putting all the politics aside, I do not believe that is the case. I say this because this is ultimately what this is about.

The Bill is going to bring in a licensing system that will make it much harder for retailers to sell cigarettes or vapes. Let us be clear about that. It is going to ban the sale of vapes to children immediately, bring in additional advertising bans and ban the sale of both cigarettes and vapes from vending machines. This is important, urgent legislation and we should not in good conscience slow it down. Let us get on with it, get it through both Houses immediately and ask the President to sign it. I will commence the sections we can commence immediately and we will be right back in here on the other issues.