The Government has been urged to sue the tobacco industry for the damage smoking has done to people's health.
Prof Luke Clancy, consultant respiratory physician and chairman of Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) Ireland said the Government had shied away from this action but litigation had proved to be a very powerful tool in the US.
He said the Government should sue on two fronts - for the damage done to the public's health and for the money spent by the economy on smoking-related disease.
"Our aim is to expose the tobacco industry for the corrupt business that it is. Litigation would do this," he said.
The Irish Heart Foundation chief executive Michael O'Shea echoed this call and said the tobacco companies were particularly culpable from the early 1950s to the 1970s, when they knew the damage being done but didn't reveal it.
"US lawyers have estimated that it could bring up to €20 billion to the State if the Government took a successful case," he said. "That could be spent on promoting health issues."
The Minister of State with responsibility for smoking policy, Seán Power, said his department was not working on any plans to sue the tobacco companies. He congratulated the public on making the smoking ban such a success: "Stopping or not starting smoking is the single biggest public health decision someone can make."
The Irish Heart Foundation also urged the Government to substantially increase the price of cigarettes and said tobacco must be removed from the Consumer Price Index so that price rises would not affect pay-bargaining.
Meanwhile, Prof Clancy said the Government must now lead the way on research into smoking and related disease, instead of "piggy-backing" on research provided by other countries.
He said the health effects of smoking were well documented and he predicted that most of the future advances in reducing the incidence of smoking would be made through social science. "For example, why do people start smoking? How do you influence them?"
Prof Clancy described the workplace smoking ban as "the health initiative of the century".
He said he always knew that the ban would be successful because he had campaigned for the introduction of smokeless fuel in the 1980s. "Like the smoking ban, they told us it couldn't be done. It would cost too much and it would be politically unacceptable. Like the smog, I had no doubt that the vast majority of people would accept the smoking ban if we could convince them that it was harming other people."
Ash Ireland's ultimate aim is to achieve a tobacco free society. "Even if nobody started smoking it would be a long time before we have a tobacco free society," Prof Clancy said. "Some 25 per cent of people still smoke here but other societies have reduced it to the low teens so we have a long way to go."
