Erin McGreehan (Louth, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister of State. It is great to have this debate in this House. I look forward to supporting the Minister of State as she brings forward the urgent legislation that has to come next. The "Vaping Nation" programme on Virgin Media One shone a stark light on what parents, teachers and health professionals have been warning us all about for some time, which is that vaping has become normalised among our children and adults. People believe vapes are harmless, but they are incredibly harmful. What was once marketed as a tool to help smokers to quit has been repackaged into bright disposable gadgets designed to hook the next generation on nicotine. The evidence is clear, as the Minister of State knows. Nearly one in five young people in Ireland between the ages of 15 and 24 now vape. Among school-aged children, vaping rates are higher than smoking rates. More than three quarters of teenagers who vape have never touched a cigarette before. That is not harm reduction; that is harm creation.

Fianna Fáil has always led the way on public health. It was our party leader, the Taoiseach, Deputy Martin, who introduced the world's first workplace smoking ban. In government, we have banned the sale of nicotine-inhaling products to under 18s, ended self-service sales and legislated for the licensing system for retailers, but as the Minister of State knows the job is not done yet. The two Bills are being finalised. The public health (single-use vapes) Bill will ban disposable vapes outright. These are devices that entice children and pollute our environment. The public health (tobacco products and nicotine-inhaling products) Bill will restrict packaging, flavours and advertising. There will be no more bubble gum flavours, no more cartoon branding and no more shop displays aimed at our children. We need to ensure our legislation is robust enough to ban outright alternative nicotine products. Ministers must have the ability to be flexible to create a regulation to automatically add a new product to a banned list. Legislation alone is not enough and will not be. We must back it with strong enforcement, especially in the black market that continues to increase supply to our children and adults.

A reply to a parliamentary question I received from the HSE confirmed that by June of this year, 310 test purchases had been carried out and there had been 50 cases of non-compliance. That is a breach rate of 16%. It shows a little bit of progress in relation to checks, but we need far more of those checks. We need a far greater focus on imports and illegal supply. We need to deepen the research into the long-term health impacts of vaping, youth addiction patterns and how best to support those children and people who are already hooked. Children are becoming addicted. I ask the Minister of State to ensure the HSE has the resources to deliver appropriate targeted programmes to help those young people to quit. Some adult smokers, like Deputy Ó Cearúil, have turned to vaping to help them to quit. Regulated products will remain available to them, but it is our moral duty to work on public health and protect children from nicotine addiction and the long-term harms that we already know there are from tobacco and nicotine.

Rightly, history will judge us. Our children's health will judge us in years to come. We will be judged not on how convenient we made it for industry to sell these products, but on how strong and high we hold public health. In the legislation that is coming, we need to send a clear message that Ireland will not allow a new generation of young people to be trapped in nicotine addiction.

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