Ms Josephine Feehily:

I accept that it is a significant problem. The evidence does not support the view that it is a growing problem. I refer to an independent study that was conducted for the Revenue Commissioners and the national Office of Tobacco Control. Traders and, in particular, tobacco companies often like to focus on higher level data while discounting legal personal imports. As long as it is easy for those who smoke to get flights to places where they can buy cigarettes to bring them back to Ireland, that kind of activity will happen. There is no point in conflating the two figures. It has to be recognised that free movement allows people to import cigarettes for their personal use. We have met representatives of the business community to discuss this issue. We have established a special hotline they can use to report activity of this nature, but we have not received significant concrete intelligence, as opposed to statements. I would be very happy if they would give us more concrete intelligence on which to focus our limited resources. We are always going to have limited resources which have to stretch across all the various risks.