Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

People Before Profit opposes this increase, as we have opposed it every year, because it is yet another form of regressive charge. We are very much in favour of promoting and encouraging and, indeed, financing public health education about the dangers of smoking. It undoubtedly make you sick and ill and it kills you in many cases, if not most, eventually. It is dangerous and we want far fewer people to smoke. Ideally, it would be great if nobody smoked. There is not a shadow of a doubt about that. However, I am not entirely sure if the Minister's statistics reveal that it is the huge amounts of tax that have been imposed each year on cigarettes that have resulted in fewer people smoking, which I welcome. Is it not just public education generally about the harms and dangers of smoking? I would like to hear a little more to back up that assertion. The problem is this is punishing people who have an addiction. Often they are people who are older or from lower income brackets and so on, and this hits them when they have an addiction they cannot get rid of and financially punishes them. While we want to encourage people to give up smoking, we should give them supports to get off it. We should give them the nicotine patches for free and whatever is necessary to encourage people to move away from smoking but I do not believe imposing a punitive financial penalty on people for being addicted to this substance is the right way to approach it. I think it is regressive and unfair, as does People Before Profit.

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