Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am always very wary of proposing things live but I take Deputy Shortall's point about three years potentially being too long and Deputy Lahart's point about the possibility of dividing it up. The most important part of this legislation to me is protecting children. There are other pieces to this as well. Putting barriers in place to prevent children vaping, for all the reasons we all agree with, is the most essential piece. I would be very interested to know, as I think we all would, as quickly as possible how well that is going.

I would not presume to speak for anyone at this committee but my view is that this is the tobacco industry getting back to getting children smoking. That is what I believe, rightly or wrongly, and we need to come down on it like a tonne of bricks.

I ask colleagues to let me to reflect on it and we can talk about it afterwards. I am very open to the idea of taking the section on the ban for children, the thing we can do straightaway, and perhaps doing a review on that. We probably need to let it run for a year and then we could do it. Perhaps it could be done in 15 or 18 months or so and then in regard to the other sections and Deputy Shortall's point, we can do it after two years. This would give one year for the systems to get in place. We let it run for a year and then we review it. We might continue the conversation between now and Report Stage to find something that works. I think we could accelerate the piece that is going to be commenced straightaway.