John Lyons (Dublin North West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As a smoker, I wish I never smoked but I do and it is not the easiest addiction to kick. It is equally as difficult to deal with smoking addiction as alcohol addiction. I am a member of the Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. It is easy to get illegal tobacco in any town or village around the country, my own included. It is a growing part of the economy in this country. Retailers take issue with price increases. We have a number of mobile scanners located at ports that can scan for illicit cigarettes but there are not enough of them.

I note from the information we have received that the money it would cost to have a number of additional port scanners and staff allocated to run them 24 hours per day would be made back overnight by comparison with what it would cost to really clamp down on the illicit tobacco trade in Ireland. Putting 10 cent on tobacco will not stop me or the hard-pressed smoker from smoking. It will be tougher on us, particularly on those who find it difficult to make ends meet. Sometimes smoking is the only relief people have during the week. We have made it a little bit harder by imposing the tax but the reality is that all smokers wish at some stage in their lives that they did not smoke. We really need to invest in mobile scanners, in particular. We need to clamp down on cigarettes whose ingredients we do not even know and which are worse than those we can buy over the counter.

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