MARIE O’HALLORAN

Minister for Health James Reilly has defended the delay in the passage of legislation to prevent smoking in vehicles when children are present.

Dr Reilly said care had to be taken with the legislation because of the power of the smoking lobby and its potential to delay proceedings through the courts. “It looks so simple from the outside but can get very complicated when so many departments were involved,” he added.

The Protection of Children’s Health from Tobacco Smoke Bill, which was passed in the Seanad yesterday, was introduced two years ago as an amendment to the Public Health (Tobacco) Act, which banned smoking in pubs.

NUI Senator John Crown proposed the amendment which was sponsored by Independent Jillian van Turnhout and Fianna Fáil's Mark Daly. Prof Crown said they thought it would have been faster to do it that way.

Distinct
Dr Reilly said however the provisions to ban smoking in cars with children present should be a stand-alone Bill because it would policed by An Garda Síochána and not HSE environmental officers and the penalties were "quite distinct" from the existing Act.

He also said the Bill would be “self policing” and along with the proposers stressed that it did not aim to penalise people but to educate them.

The Minister warned that the tobacco industry would bring its “considerable forces and might to bear . . . to frustrate our attempts to protect our children from the killer effects of tobacco”.

He said they had delayed the other piece of legislation on plain packaging from being published. “We have to be ultra-careful with everything to do with tobacco because they have rafts of lawyers poring over everything we do and everything we say, looking to find holes and rationale for challenging them.

“So everything has to be done particularly carefully or they will try to knock this into courts and, as you know, they’ve very deep pockets”.

Lobbyists
Trinity Senator Seán Barrett said tobacco lobbyists had been seeking interviews. "I just told them to send in whatever papers they have and I would read them. However, I do not wish to be lobbied by the tobacco industry."

Ms van Turnhout asked for assurance that the Bill would be passed in the Dáil by the summer. The Minister said he couldn’t give a guarantee because any of the 166 TDs in the Dáil could produce “an amendment that might make sense”. But he said he wanted to see the Bill brought into effect as quickly as possible.

The Bill provides for summary convictions with fines of up to €1,000 for refusing to stop the car, refusing to give a name and address or giving false information.