Ms Claire Gordon:

I would not say there is contrary evidence, but there are definitely views on that particular number. Other organisations and research institutes, including the WHO, would look at that figure and say it is too early to make that kind of call. This essentially is what it is. In the UK, for instance, it was announced last weekend that e-cigarettes are going to be put onto prescription. The UK and New Zealand are two countries that are going foursquare behind e-cigarettes as the alternative.

One of the things this will include is that someone can be prescribed e-cigarettes. This will be e-cigarettes that go through their equivalent of our Health Products Regulatory Authority, HPRA. They will be medically approved devices. A manufacturer of e-cigarettes can send its product to that body and it will be approved, essentially at the level of a medical device. It can then be prescribed by doctors to people to get them off smoking. Across the globe in other countries such as Brazil, India and Australia, they have banned e-cigarettes. This will tell committee of the incredible polarisation of views.

The 95% paper is one paper but then the WHO has said it is too soon to tell, that we do not know what the harms are, that we have certainly identified some harms, and that the jury is out on this. This is not to say the 95% figure is wrong but it is just one of many views, and it is certainly one view that Public Health England and the UK have gone behind. That is the way they are going. Equally respectable and authoritative research sources are saying other things and other countries are making the decisions based on that research.

One of the most difficult things around e-cigarettes is that there is no consensus except on those couple of levels, which is that tobacco cigarettes are definitely worse than e-cigarettes. Is it agreed across the globe that e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful than tobacco cigarettes? It is not agreed across the globe that this is a meaningful figure or that it is true. As was said earlier, ultimately, there is always the question of the long-term effects. A lot of the illness from tobacco cigarettes takes 30 years, so while a person would be okay now, he or she has already started the process whereby, 30 years from now, he or she would get peripheral arterial disease or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Nobody can tell right now that this is what is going to happen. That is the big fear about e-cigarettes. Everything looks pretty good and a 95% figure sounds very good but nobody knows what that means 20 years or 30 years from now for the people who are vaping now. "I do not know" is the answer.