Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes, it is different. The advice I have is that the UK and New Zealand have vaping as part of their smoking cessation policy, but that no other country does.

The WHO is taking an increasingly hard line on vaping. My understanding is that is for two reasons: the first of which chimes with Deputy Hourigan's point that it is still highly addictive. The second is that the evidence is still emerging. I have spoken to respiratory consultants in Ireland who are very concerned, not just about teenagers but about adults. They say that vaping could end up being more dangerous than we currently understand it to be.

Deputy Durkan is correct about the view of the UK, which New Zealand also has. Interestingly, those two countries also went for a smoke-free generation policy. Interestingly, New Zealand pulled back when the new government came in, and it remains to be seen whether the Labour Government in the UK will go there. That links into Deputy Cullinane's point on the North-South situation. It is something that Robin Swann and I discussed when he was health Minister in Northern Ireland and now Mike Nesbitt and I and the officials are discussing, which is that, ideally, we would have one approach on the island. That would be better for the reasons we understand, such as arbitrage and all of that. It remains to be seen where the British Labour Party will go with this. It may be the case that Northern Ireland is given discretion to do it in a different way. My preference is that it would be the same approach North and South.

Several of us discussed on Second Stage the merits of moving to a smoke-free generation policy. We asked why we should not go the way the previous UK Government went, and where the New Zealand Government went, although it has pulled back from it. That is something we need to keep under active consideration. For all the reasons that we understand, it will be up to a future health Minister to take a look at that.