Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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It has gone up in every year I can remember. It has certainly gone up in every budget in which I have been involved, in one way or another, since 2016. Of course, it is always difficult to disentangle the impact of price and the impacts of changes in behaviour and attitudes to health. However, the advice I continue to receive from the Department of Health is that changes with regard to price are beneficial from a health point of view and are playing a role in influencing the consumption of tobacco. As the Deputy will be aware, against all that, we have to be mindful of how the influence of price might lead to people bringing cigarettes into our State whether legally, which people are entitled to do up to a certain point, or illegally for sale. That has influenced our budgetary work in that the Revenue gain from changes such as this has been reduced downwards. I acknowledge that tobacco has increasingly been sourced in other ways over the years.