Government leaves all the publicans fuming

They huffed and they puffed in Portlaoise, but, in the end, they couldn't blow Minister Martin's smoking ban down.

The 1,200 publicans arrived to vent their anger at the Minister's ban. In two and a half-hours of roaring and cheering in a smoke-filled hotel conference centre in Portlaoise, they did just that.

Once the popular image of the Minister for Health was that sepia photograph of him as an angelic youngster wearing his communion suit. Sitting through this meeting you got the image of a demonic monster hell-bent on the destruction of the pub trade.

Mr Paul Stephenson, a pub owner from Ballymoate, Co Sligo, got things going after accusing the Minister and the Government of embarking on a totalitarian campaign. "We seem to have Franco Fahey in Galway, Mussolini Martin, our Health Minister, and Adolf Ahern, ably-supported by the Fianna Fag party," he said.

Adopting a Churchillian mode, the rhetoric soared upwards as Mr Stephenson warned of the dark forces that could be unleashed if the ban is implemented.

"It's our freedom that's at stake, our right to choose one thing in preference to another. Our democracy is at stake . . . if he's failed to listen to the people, and failed to listen to the members of his own party, then maybe he'll listen to members of the judiciary."

Others used a less florid delivery style, choosing instead to ask the Minister for Health how would he get on if trying to eject a drunken, cigarette-smoking customer from his premises.

"I'd like to see Minister Martin, with his long smiling face, trying to do that," thundered Mr Willie Daly, a publican from Ennistymon, Co Clare.

Another said the Minister of skulduggery was ignoring publicans at every possible turn. "Micheál Martin has one hell of a neck," said Mr Gerry Rafter, chairman of the Kilkenny City Vintners. "At this stage he wants to discuss the implementation with us. We've been trying to discuss it with him for the past 11 months and he's ducked and dived with us."

After two and a half-hours, however, the show was over. The mass of people and traffic left just as abruptly as it arrived, with no firm idea on how to halt the ban itself.