Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Will the Government consider implementing laws that would restrict the importation of tobacco products into the country exclusively to those with plain packaging that includes both pictorial and text warnings in both the Irish and English languages? A similar system that was introduced in Finland requires health warnings to be provided in words and pictures in both Finnish and Swedish. I am raising this issue because, during lockdown, the value of the sale of tobacco products in Ireland increased by €130 million. This was not because there was a huge increase in the number of people smoking or the number of cigarettes they smoked per day but because people were not able to bring in cigarettes from other countries as they were not travelling abroad for holidays or business. The increase of €130 million gives an indication of the volume of products being brought in from abroad by people coming back from their holidays.

In Finland, only tobacco products with packaging that includes warnings in Finnish and Swedish can be brought into that country. Why not introduce the same requirement in Ireland such that only products with warnings in English and Irish are allowed into this country? That leads me on to another issue, which is that, in Finland, people are restricted to bringing in no more than 200 cigarettes per person. For people coming back to Ireland from abroad, the limit is 800 cigarettes. This is a health issue to which we need to give priority. We want to reduce the number of cigarettes people smoke. It is also a financial issue.

There is another issue arising in regard to the sale of packet cigarettes. Pricing is based on a packet of 20 but there is nothing preventing the sale of 23 or 27 cigarettes, say, in a packet. If we look at the figures, a packet of 20 cigarettes costs €12.20, 23 cigarettes cost €13.80 and a pack of 35 costs €20. The difference is a cost of 61 cent per unit for a pack of 20 compared with 57.14 cent per unit for a pack of 35. In addition, when a person purchases a packet containing more than 20 cigarettes, the likelihood is that he or she will smoke the whole 28 of them, say, in one day, rather than the usual total of 20.

These are issues we need to tackle. The regulations are not precise and concise enough in dealing with the increase in the volume of cigarettes being consumed in this country. It is an issue we must look at very carefully and which could be dealt with in the budget.

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