Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful to Senator Ó Murchú for giving me some of his time. The Minister is welcome and I am delighted to hear of his ambition to make Ireland tobacco-free by 2025. It is laudable, but unrealistic unless we do much more. For example, Ireland does not even have a university campus that is smoke free. As the Minister will recall, I wrote to him during Ireland's European Presidency. Compared with America, Europe has no smoke-free campuses.

While the Minister's intention is good, I support the Bill for two reasons. First, smoking kills. Second, the Bill gets to the root of the problem. For that, I commend Senator Crown. The 2007 Slán survey showed that smoking was related to 40 diseases. According to the 2008 CSO statistics, 5,200 people die of smoking-related diseases per year. This is 100 people per week. These are epidemic proportions.

I have a particular interest in this issue. In the mid-1990s, I was seconded to Mary Immaculate College in Limerick and the Mid-Western Health Board to design a programme, what is now known as social, personal and health education, SPHE, as a subject for primary and secondary schools with a team of others. One of the programme's components was smoking cessation and education. When we wrote the programme, it was called Bí Folláin, which means "Fulfil your health potential". In the course of the work, I learned that smoking thrived on and addicted the poorest, youngest, least educated and weakest. Smoking is a gateway, and illicit, drug for children aged between nine and 13 years. These are primary school pupils. Young girls find it particularly difficult to stop. As Senator Norris stated, there is also peer pressure to be seen as cool. We had to work hard on the question of how to make smoking unattractive to people when they felt good and believed they looked good.

Bad breath had one of the biggest effects on young girls. We also considered the fact that one neat drop of nicotine killed a bird instantly.

In 2000, I visited Romania where the tobacco industry sells cigarettes at low prices to get people addicted. The same approach was used in South America.

I am asking the Minister to let this legislation go through to Committee Stage and, as Senator van Turnhout said, accept the Bill in principle. Let us amend it and make it constitutionally acceptable on Committee Stage, but the Minister should not stop the Bill. Smoking kills so let us not play politics here. The House should unite on this measure. I commend Senator Crown who is working at the coalface and can see the effects. One hundred of our citizens die every week from smoking, so let us act now.