John Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to say a few words on the Bill. As Deputy Keaveney has said, Fianna Fáil supports the Bill in principle. We published our own Bill in 2012. We are all aware that tobacco companies invest huge sums of money in advertising and marketing their products in order to recruit new customers, who are nearly always children and young people. This is why legislation to introduce plain or standardised packaging is urgently required. Plain or standardised packaging will limit the tobacco industry's ability to attract young people by using marketing techniques that are essentially misleading. Australia has already introduced legislation to this effect which has proved to be very successful.

Enacting the Bill will mean that Ireland will be one of the leaders in implementing Articles 11 and 13 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the global tobacco-control treaty that commits more than 170 parties to reduce demand and supply of tobacco products.

As the previous Deputy noted, the only concern is that European Union approval has not yet been secured. In his reply, the Minister might outline how this will affect the legislation in Ireland and whether it will have implications whereby tobacco companies or other individuals will be able to claim damages against the State. I ask the Minister to clarify this issue.

I speak as someone who gave up smoking in 1984 following a bowel operation and on the instructions of the surgeon who carried out the procedure, the late Johnny O'Sullivan. He instructed me not to come back near him if I continued to smoke, as I would be wasting both his time and mine, and I took his advice. It always is difficult to give up smoking and some people believe Members are introducing nanny state-type legislation with regard to this and other issues that come before them from time to time, such as the sugar tax, the fat tax and tax on drink, beer and so on. However, I believe Members have come to recognise the importance of what Deputy Martin did in banning smoking in the workplace. It also is important to continue on with such legislation and I note that in the Minister's area of responsibility and particularly in the Health Service Executive, smoking has been banned in hospitals and other areas under the executive's control over the past year. I believe a few areas must be dealt with. At present, illegal cigarettes are being sold nationwide and operators in every town in Ireland are selling illegal cigarettes at enormous cost to the country's economy and they are out of control in many ways. In addition, a new type of cigarette has arrived in the form of e-cigarettes. While smoke comes out of them, I do not know what will be the implications for the customers in the years and months ahead. Certainly, I have noticed that such cigarettes now are being consumed by people in bookmaker's offices, pubs and other areas. While I do not know what damage they will do to people, there certainly should be an investigation into their operation, particularly with regard to children and other people. I am sure the Minister will deal with this issue in the future.

The Bill will control the design and appearance of tobacco products. It will remove all forms of branding, including trademarks, logos, colours and graphics from packages, except for the brand and variant name, which will be presented in a uniform typeface across all packets. As the Minister has noted, the Bill's objective is to make tobacco packs look less attractive to consumers, to make health warnings more prominent and to reduce the ability of the packs to mislead people, especially children, about the harmful effects of smoking. As all Members are aware, the tobacco industry has invested heavily in pack design to communicate specific messages to specific groups. This Bill will take away one of the industry's means of promoting tobacco as a desirable product. As the majority of smokers start as children, packaging elements are by definition directed mainly at young people. Packaging differentiates brands and is particularly important in homogenous consumer goods categories such as cigarettes. Marketing literature highlights the critical role played by pack design in the marketing mix. Cigarette packaging conveys brand identity through brand logos, collars, fonts, pictures, packaging materials and pack shapes. The world's most popular cigarette brand, Marlboro, can be identified readily through its iconic red chevron. The Marlboro brand is estimated to be worth $21 billion and is estimated to be the tenth most valuable product brand in the world. Obviously, the branding of cigarettes and brand names are extremely important to tobacco companies.

In Ireland, children start smoking at a younger age than any other European country, at 16 years of age. Moreover, 78% of smokers started to smoke before the age of 18. Each year in Ireland, 5,500 people die from smoking, which is the equivalent of my home town of Enniscorthy being wiped out annually. In order to maintain current smoking levels, the tobacco industry must, as the previous speaker noted, attract 50 new smokers per day to replace those who either have died or quit. Given that most smokers start to smoke before they are 18, most of these new recruits are children. I reiterate that in Ireland, tobacco companies need 50 people per day to take up smoking and that is the idea behind the branding, the packaging and their advertising. Standardised packaging will stop smokers from believing that some cigarettes are less harmful than others. Light colours and pack designs are used to give a false impression that some cigarette brands are healthier than others. Standardised packaging would make health warnings more effective. Research has shown that more smokers will seek to quit with standardised packs. Standardised packaging will reduce the appeal of tobacco products to younger people and, as I stated previously, younger people are very much the primary target for tobacco industry marketing. At present, cigarette companies use design-heavy packaging. The colours, imagery and design are used to attract smokers and reduce the impact of on-pack health warnings. In 2010, the trade magazine Tobacco Reporterran a series of articles on the importance of packaging to the industry's business and stated:

In many countries, the cigarette pack is now the only remaining avenue of communication with smokers. This development is challenging packaging suppliers to be creative.

Obviously, much of the advertising on television has been banned, as has much advertising of cigarettes in the sporting arena. Consequently, the only opportunity now available to the industry is with the different types of packaging and the more sophisticated and enticing the package, the better to attract young people to smoke. The tobacco industry is aware that if it recruits smokers at a young age, they often will become lifetime smokers. Health legislation that is effectively reducing the smoking rates, such as the ban on cigarette displays in shops and on cigarette advertising, has restricted the ways in which the tobacco industry can attract new smokers. Consequently, as I stated, one of the few ways left is through the packaging. Tobacco companies invest huge sums of money on advertising and marketing their products to recruit new customers, who nearly always are children and young people. This is why legislation as outlined by the Minister to introduce plain or standardised packaging is so urgently required. I hope the Minister will proceed with this legislation as quickly as possible and that he will iron out any difficulties that may be involved with the legislation not being carried at the same time at Brussels level as it is here in Ireland. Hopefully, he will be able to get over that difficulty. Fianna Fáil believes that children should have a right to be protected from the marketing of a highly addictive and seriously harmful product. The only way to do so is through the production of plain packaging in the future. The only way forward is by making smoking less appealing and by making health warnings more effective. The faster this legislation is introduced, the more lives that ultimately will be saved.

I received a letter today from the Irish Cigarette Machine Operators Association, ICMOA, which represents the people who supply vending machines with cigarettes nationwide. The association supports much of the Minister's legislation in respect of the packaging and similar areas. At present, 145 people are employed in this industry in Ireland. The association is concerned about some of the proposals the Minister has been talking about introducing into the legislation. For example, the association is concerned that the Minister might propose an increase in the tobacco retail licence fee from a once-off fee of €50 to a potential fee of €1,000 per outlet per year. There are approximately 6,000 such outlets in Ireland. The association also is concerned about the proposal to restrict trading hours and how not being allowed to sell tobacco products after 6 p.m. also would have a detrimental effect on their businesses. They make the point that criminals are selling illegal tobacco from door to door, at street markets and on the streets. This legislation will not stop this and they seek some control of this issue. In summary, the people operating the vending machines have some concerns and perhaps the Minister would meet the aforementioned organisation and have discussions with it.

As the organisation in question states in correspondence I and, I am sure, other Deputies received, while it accepts the general principle of the Bill, it has concerns that some aspects of it will have a serious impact on their business. The companies in question are primarily family businesses employing one or two people. I ask the Minister to consider this matter. He must also explain how he will overcome the barriers presented by European legislation.

The Fianna Fáil Party supports and welcomes this Bill. My party, specifically its current leader, Deputy Martin, introduced the first ban on smoking in the workplace, which has been extended by the Health Service Executive to hospitals and other health facilities. It is correct to take another step and introduce a ban on the packaging that appears to attract many young people to smoking. For this reason, my party will support the Bill.

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