Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish the Minister well in his endeavours on this very important subject. As a retailer who has been selling cigarettes for over 20 years, I have seen and studied people's habits when it comes to cigarette smoking. As the Minister himself said, it is terribly important to do everything we possibly can to stop the younger generation from starting smoking. I have every sympathy, as I know the Minister has, for hardened, addicted smokers who find it terribly difficult to give up smoking and who probably, in many cases, will never give up smoking - they will leave this world continuing their habit. Nonetheless, I commend the Government in all of its endeavours in trying to stop young people smoking. There is no good reason that a young person should make that move to take the first cigarette and eventually get hooked and form a lifelong habit. It is breaking them financially and crippling their health so, of course, the Minister is right to do everything he can to stop this.

That said, however, there is one issue on which I have had a difficulty with this and previous Governments, which sought to price cigarettes very high in comparison to the rest of Europe. As the statistics prove, this has left a big opening for the illegal tobacco trade. There is no reason in the world that a person in Ireland should be paying €10 for a pack of cigarettes when a person in another part of Europe can pay €1.80 or €2 for the same thing. This is leaving the illegal trade wide open.

I wish the Minister good luck in his endeavours. He should always remember that, for some of the people who are smoking today, nothing the Minister or the Government does will stop them. However, if we can stop young people, the Minister is to be highly commended in that regard.

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