Ulick Burke (Fine Gael)

I welcome and support the legislation. However, the Government must take responsibility for much of the uncertainty about the legislation because of the extension of dates and mistakes made when drafting the Bill initially which resulted in loopholes that could be contested. All of this led to uncertainty. If there is a difficulty in implementing the legislation, surely it is as a result of the inadequacy of the original legislation.

I ask the Minister of State to give an undertaking that health boards will no longer be allowed to use children as pawns, investigators or testers by being sent into various premises to purchase cigarettes. As a former member of a health board, I have asked the CEO of the Western Health Board on various occasions to stop using children in court cases to prove a particular person sold cigarettes to under age people. This is wrong. If this continues following the enactment of the legislation, it will be a criminal act on the part of health boards or other agencies who use children in this way.

There have been headlines in local newspapers of court proceedings where the health board fined the owners of premises because cigarettes were sold to children. There is something terribly wrong with an official of a health board sending children into a premises to try to buy cigarettes. I ask the Minister of State to immediately issue health boards with a directive to desist from such an activity. Various Senators said that they see many young people, particularly young girls, smoking cigarettes in public. How can we reconcile that with the health board, as the agency of the Minister in this instance, testing the effectiveness of the ban by using children? Is there nothing else in this Bill whereby we can test the effectiveness of legislation other than to use children? I ask the Minister of State to stop this continuing.

Those of us who, during a daily routine, go into various places with which we would normally associate smoking, such as pubs, have no doubt that the air is cleaner and that people are now conscious of the need for cleaner air and the need to stop smoking. It is difficult to reconcile with the legislation the list of exemptions made. As Senator Browne said earlier, the Minister has never given any justification for them. There is no justification for this list of exemptions, particularly as they relate to health situations. We are talking about health, and the diseases caused by smoking, yet these irreconcilable exemptions are made.

The Minister mentioned the importance of education regarding non-smoking. We are supposedly putting forward education as a way in which we can strengthen the smoking ban, but whether it is the Minister for Education and Science or the Minister for Health and Children who will take responsibility, the Government has done nothing except put the notion on paper and abandon it. It has been simply pushed out in the public arena so that someone or some enthusiastic group might take it on, such as teachers or health advisers. We have done nothing to follow through on it. If we intend to use the idea of education as a means of reducing smoking, we must do something by way of follow-up and encouragement, in whatever way we can, to provide the wherewithal. We might send advertising into the schools, or use some information process, rather than just letting the notion stand and hoping something will happen.

Senator Feeney said that the public will enforce this legislation. It is a weak and wishful position if the legislation is being published in the hope that the public will implement it. If the legislation in this instance is based on that strategy, as the only effective way of implementing it, God help us. It will not work. The idea of using "reasonable force" is not practicable. We are putting something on paper and we must find better ways of implementing this legislation by way of encouragement regarding the health aspects and asking people to do the right thing, which will benefit us all as citizens. We face great difficulties here and the uncertainty we had before is shown repeatedly in the provisions of this Bill, and in the initial failure to bring forward an Act without having to withdraw it and amend it to such an extent. We might be the leaders in Europe in this area. We might have hastily put together this legislation to show we are doing something in the health area, but it is too important for such an approach. I hope the Bill succeeds, but the record of the Minister and the Department regarding this legislation has been unbelievable, uncertain and woolly, to say the least.