Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am fully in favour of banning disposable vapes and we are going to do so. The Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, as the Deputy noted, has completed a public consultation. He has come at it from environmental grounds and I agree with those grounds. These things are a scourge. I am coming at it from a public health perspective. I believe they are targeting children and young people. We have evidence of youth smoking rates and we also have evidence from the UK of some very worrying materials and ingredients in some disposable vapes, which is probably because they are harder to regulate. I have every intention of legislating and the Minister of State may well be looking at legislating from an environmental perspective.

My intention is to introduce this in the new Bill, and my reason for doing so is the same as we have just discussed. The advice I have is that if we were to introduce it in this Bill, including what Deputy Shortall is proposing and I appreciate the arguments that are being made, we would again be facing an EU notification and a further six-month delay in banning these vapes for children. I have no doubt we will all be sitting in this committee, once we have this new Bill through, in the minimum length of time but we cannot delay the ban for children in the meantime. I agree with what has been said but with one caveat, namely, that we should put it in the second Bill because we cannot delay the ban on vapes for children.