John Dolan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne. We know each other a very long time. Senator Reilly, the Minister of State and myself served in the Eastern Regional Health Authority. We were there at the start of it and at the time of its demise, but that is another story.

I am very pleased to see this motion brought forward by Senator James Reilly, which has a great deal of support. There is no doubt that many more names are in support of it. We cannot say we have ever gone beyond the normalisation of smoking. Bringing in the smoking ban in 2004 was the first major arresting of the idea that smoking is just something people do.

Introducing measures now will make us consider that this is not just about people smoking indoors but about smoking in areas where people are eating food. It is significant that we have taken the issue from smoking indoors to smoking outdoors also. This is a measured initiative to address that problem. It is an enabling motion which puts the Minister in poll position to move on and take action by way of a statutory instrument or whatever. That is important.

People often talk about their right to this and that, but we need to be clear that in a civilised community rights have to work within the notion of the common good. It is for the common good that we would extinguish smoking. Public health has to trump my wishes. However, I am sure that the great majority of people who smoke wish they had never picked up the first cigarette they smoked and find it horrendously difficulty to give them up. We just heard Senator Craughwell speak about making effort after effort and yet he still has the daily urge to smoke just one cigarette. We must continue to come down on the side of the public good.

We have to have sympathy for people who smoke. Equally, we have to continue implementing strong measures to encourage people not to start smoking and others to quit. It is important that is not seen in any sense as being anti-smokers. It is anti the dirty habit that kills people. Someone said long ago that they love the sinner but not the sin. We must have compassion for and give support to people who smoke.

On the normalisation of smoking, my mother smoked when I was a child. She was a seamstress. I can still see her sitting at the table with the sowing machine in front of the big window. Myself and my brother were captivated that she could smoke a cigarette without once taking it out of her mouth. Jim and I would look at her and try to figure out if the ash would drop. It did not. She would finish smoking the cigarette and deftly tip it into the ash tray, pick out another cigarette and light it from the previous one. That is a memory of my dear departed mother who paid the price for that, but there was no issue. This was a game for us. Will the ash fall off the cigarette or will she once again tip it into the ash tray and start smoking another? That is the demon of the normalisation of something that is very bad.

I was in Montenegro last October. A colleague of mine and I went out for dinner on the first night. We went into a lovely restaurant and I thought immediately there was something wrong, and when we looked around we saw a table where everyone was smoking.Twenty years ago in Ireland there would have been nothing wrong and we would never have looked around. That is part of what we have achieved but we can never say it is achieved. We have to keep working at it. This is a practical measure. It is not a question of getting at people who smoke. They have a demon within that they dearly wish they did not have. Therefore we must make sure that the programmes to assist and encourage people go hand in hand with these measures.