Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will try to be brief to give the other Deputies time. This measure has nothing to do with public health, but it has everything to do with grabbing more money in a regressive way that will yet again hit the least well off. This will hit those on the lowest incomes. It is precisely the gross inequalities in our society, widespread unemployment and poverty that will fuel addiction to cigarettes and alcohol, with all the problems that entails. Those are the things the Government needs to deal with if it wants to improve public health.

The Government certainly does not need to take €780 million out of the health service or effect cutbacks in education and all the rest of it. This is regressive, is a money-grabbing exercise and will hit the bar trade, thereby causing job losses in that sector. As has been noted previously, the only entities likely to benefit from this are the multiples and so on, towards which the Government has taken no action regarding their below-cost selling practices. This is a regressive move and my group will be voting against it.

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