Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We support the Bill, as do a lot of other people, on the basis that it is dealing with an anomaly that has existed whereby it has not been illegal to sell vapes to children. We are aware that a huge number of vendors have been very careful in how they operate and all the rest of it.

We have probably all looked at vaping through a particular prism. We have all seen where it has been helpful to people as a harm reduction tool in facilitating them to move away from incredibly harmful smoking. We must differentiate in that regard. We must also consider that there are particular flavours and vaping products that are definitely targeted at young people and children. This is something we must look at in the round. We are talking here about a new licensing system. None of us can put an absolutely perfect system in place straightaway. The biggest term we need to get used to is the idea of a review and feedback. Some of the amendments we are looking at would be from the point of view of a three-year period, for example, in looking at what the impact of the legislation would be. Has it reduced the number of people who are vaping or what other impacts are there? We never know what the unintended consequences will be. We must also consider whether anybody has found workarounds that we would not like to see.

We all know how addictive nicotine is. On some level, we probably saw vaping as something a lot safer in that the delivery mechanism was not tobacco with all of the absolutely harmful fumes and chemicals that go with it, such as carbon monoxide and other terrible chemicals. The fact is that we do not know the full impact vaping has.

While there have been recent studies, I do not believe there has been sufficient research. There will have to be a big body of work to educate young people in particular. It was said that people are taking in food additives, but they are taking these in through the breathing apparatus rather than ingesting them through the digestive system which is well able to do with those sorts of things and we need to know about the dangers.

I also accept we are talking about kids vaping at a time when, unfortunately, there is a huge amount of illegal narcotics out there which people are availing of. We need the regulation and to ensure that we have a review mechanism and that this legislation and anything else we look at has the intended impact. This is also about ensuring that we have a reasonable licensing system, something that is safe for people and, in particular, that we protect children and do not create new addicts.

See this speech in context