Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The Labour Party welcomes Ireland signing up to these arrangements. Cigarette smuggling is estimated to cost the State approximately €500 million a year. Given the very bad state of the public finances it is important to remind people who buy smuggled cigarettes, whether on street corners or out of the back of vans, that the cost to everybody is enormous. The capacity of smuggled cigarettes to damage an individual's health even more than ordinary cigarettes properly manufactured and vouched for by the manufacturers is very considerable.

The recent discoveries have been extremely helpful and I congratulate the Customs Service, the Revenue Commissioners and the gardaí. However, former Scotland Yard officers have pointed to the fact that the penalties in Ireland for cigarette smuggling are exceptionally low. Where prosecutions are undertaken - and the number of prosecutions is relatively small - the average fine for cigarette smuggling is only approximately €500. I want to draw the attention of the Minister of State to the remarks reported in the Irish Examiner of John O'Connor, a retired flying squad commander, that "the average fine cigarette smugglers were being hit with in Ireland was minuscule. Any attempt to dissuade gangs from smuggling in major shipments of contraband would fail unless the fines system was toughened up". He also made the important point that Ireland is seen as a fairly attractive staging post for smuggling and that historically, the number of prosecutions taken by Ireland for smuggling is small and that the penalties average approximately €500.

For a professional criminal or smuggler, being brought before the courts and fined or imprisoned is part of the risk of the trade, and an average fine of €500 is seriously laughable and would not deter these people for a moment. We need to re-examine what is going on. We have a long coastline and we are an attractive jumping-off point. We have a record of IRA and loyalist paramilitaries, who were always criminals but signed up in paramilitary colours, who have now slipped over to criminality. They have very sophisticated networks and full-time businesses in cigarette smuggling. Not enough is being done to dampen it down or to create a consciousness among purchasers of contraband of the additional health risks they run by using contraband cigarettes or of the economic damage being inflicted on the country by the loss of €500 million in tax revenues because of the failure to stop smuggling.

Will the Minister of State explain what proposals there are to change the penalty structure and impose serious penalties that would make professional criminals think twice? Have the Minister of State or the Government had discussions with the Garda Commissioner on community policing in areas where contraband cigarettes are being openly sold? In many highly-visible city centre areas one can see people on the street selling cigarettes. We also know cigarettes are sold through commercial channels. It is a challenge for the Government.

We need community-based policing to tap somebody selling cigarettes on the street and stop them. Instead, we have to look at people loitering with intent. Local people know what is happening. I do not know whether the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform has spoken to the Garda Commissioner about reducing the level of sales. People are selling with impunity on streets in Irish towns and cities because there is no serious local community Garda presence in a persistent and consistent basis over a period of time to stop the selling of contraband.

This is important and it is heavily related to the drugs trade. People can use the enormous profits they make in selling contraband cigarette to invest in the drugs trade. These are professional criminals who see themselves as business people investing in smuggling and investing the profits of their smuggling in the drugs trade. Government action in this regard has been very lacking in joined up connections to deter selling on our streets and other channels, of which I am sure the Minister of State is perfectly aware.

I have raised the issue of intelligence on many occasions. Private airports in Ireland are not regularly or sufficiently scrutinised. A number of years ago, a flight from a continental airport to Weston Airport was used for drug smuggling purposes. We have many private airports but regulation of the comings and goings of craft is strictly limited, which creates an open opportunity to smuggle contraband which can be used in Ireland or brought to the North and on to the UK.

In the run up to the budget, various people on behalf of the cigarette lobby have suggested, as has the drinks trade, that in Ireland excise duty on products such as cigarettes is very high and that it should not be raised, although very good health reasons exist for increasing it. This is against a background not of the objective cost of cigarettes versus the cost to the health services over the long term of high cigarette consumption in this country but that much revenue is lost by legitimate traders through the huge sales of contraband in this country.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr. James Hamilton, recently stated that one in every four cigarettes smoked in Ireland contains illegally imported tobacco. They are sold on the streets, in pubs and clubs and through agents. An information campaign is needed to advise the public that the quality of these smuggled cigarettes is not guaranteed. They may be highly carcinogenic because of the additives used in them. The people involved in the smuggling case in Greenore appeared to be operating a cigarette factory along the Border. They were manufacturing cigarettes from contraband tobacco. Smugglers do not even get a slap on the wrist given that they pay a fine of €500.

I hope the Minister of State will tell us that the Government has serious plans in place to persuade people not to use contraband tobacco for the sake of their health in particular. I am sure the Minister for Finance could do with an extra €500 million in tax revenue. Law and order would benefit enormously if the professional smugglers of cigarettes and drugs were brought before the courts and jailed.

See this speech in context