Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Any success by Revenue in this regard is to be welcomed. I have a lot of respect for Revenue and believe its resources should be increased, as I have argued in our alternative budget and as Revenue has also argued when suggesting it could make a net gain of some €94 million for the State if it was allowed to hire additional staff to deal with black market activity and compliance.

The point I am making is that the motivation behind this measure is not public health. As I said, increasing the price of cigarettes will deter some people but others will just go into the hands of the black market. While I do not have the figures for how much is spent by Revenue on trying to curtail black market activity in regard to cigarettes, I would not think it is a huge amount. If the Minister announced today €25 million had been raised from the suggested provision, this would not just have the benefit of hopefully deterring some people from smoking cigarettes because the price is beyond their reach, but would also mean a possible doubling of the fund to deal with the issue. Any success by Revenue is to be welcomed but we just have to look around us to know contraband cigarettes are all over the place. The figure was given at the last meeting of the committee that one in three or one in four cigarettes are contraband. The market is flooded and the situation is out of control.

If this were a genuine public health issue, I am sure the Minister of State in his day job would welcome the provision of serious resources in this area. At the end of the day, the Government's intention is that nobody would smoke, which would be great for public health, although that is easier said than done. That said, the State will lose a huge amount of revenue, given it gets something like €5.77 from every packet. I would put it up to Deputy White, as the Minister of State at the Department of Health, that if we are genuinely serious about this, we would be not just putting money in our pockets in terms of increasing the amount we are taking in, we would be tackling the area where we are losing out. If the Government wanted to look at this selfishly in terms of increasing revenue and forget about the public health aspect, given people who are addicted to nicotine will always pay the higher price anyway, this measure would see a benefit in terms of additional revenue which could be then put into dealing with the issue of public health promotion and other preventative measures in trying to encourage people to come off cigarettes.

The increase in the price of cigarettes is not something to which we in Sinn Féin are opposed but we are opposed to the motivation behind it and the fact the Government is not using the resources to actually deal with the problem, which is widespread at this stage.

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