Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. Like others, I thank him for his work on this issue. I also thank my colleague, Senator Crown, on the introduction of this important Bill. The Seanad has engaged in public consultation on the issue of cancer and how lifestyle is causing one third of all cancers. The Minister will be aware of the serious cost in this regard in terms of human lives and the Exchequer.

Like Senator van Turnhout, I support the principle of the Bill. The issue of transparency is relevant this week when one considers the issues that have arisen in relation to NAMA.

Transparency is important in an organisation whose sole motivation is profit and is spending billions to ensure that legislation restricting its activities is not enacted, using every means both legal and, in some cases, illegal in order to achieve its ends to frustrate and delay, as the Minister has pointed out, the enacting of any legislation that would prevent it making far greater profits. Any such organisation should be held up to the highest scrutiny in terms of its transparency and interaction with the Government.

We need to consider what tobacco companies did in Europe in their efforts to frustrate the European Union's efforts. That is not the most transparent organisation in terms of the number of moving parts in it and the number of people who were being wined and dined in order to prevent and frustrate legislation that would stop the tobacco industry selling more of its products.

As the Minister is aware, that industry is successful in Ireland in marketing to young people because more people take up smoking at a young age here than in any other European country. The Irish Cancer Society advises us that the tobacco industry is trying to derail efforts to stop Irish people from dying from smoking. The more cigarettes the tobacco companies sell, the more people will die, which is of great concern. Some 700,000 people in Europe die each year from tobacco-related illnesses, which is a shocking figure. If that was gun-related crime, obviously we would ban them in the morning. However, this is self-inflicted. Not only is it a cost to the family in terms of the loss of a loved-one but also the cost to the taxpayer in terms of the health care expenditure necessary to look after people who are dying as a result of the sale of tobacco. If we were doing it now, we would not allow it at all and yet it persists and prevails. To a large degree the tobacco industry continues to prevail on the back of spending money on lobbying - not of Deputies and Senators - but in backroom meetings. The purpose of the Bill is to prevent backroom meetings and have them out in public.

We have all been here for debates on Private Members' Bills. There must be a standard issue text in every Department which is shoved in for such debates stating that it is unconstitutional. It was done in our time so it is the same text.