Sinéad Gibney (Dublin Rathdown, Social Democrats)

The Minister of State began by saying that the topic of the question is a matter for the Minister for Health, yet on 6 April the Minister for Finance mentioned this, on 1 May the Tánaiste mentioned it and on 8 April the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Burke, mentioned it. They all referred to this as a potential measure in the context of tariff mitigation. I will therefore ask the question again. What is the Department's position on removing alcohol labelling as a potential measure next year? This legislation has been in the pipeline since 2018. It positions us as a leader in health measures, just as the smoking ban did many years ago. As the Minister has said, the reality is that there are European measures that we need to measure ourselves by. If we kept in step with Europe on the smoking ban, we would still not have a smoking ban. This is our opportunity to mitigate a major health issue here in Ireland. It has the backing of the entire medical community. I need to be clear that this Department will not halt or pause the potential introduction of this.

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