Cabinet Committees Dail Éireann — 2026-02-24 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central We have to get tough again on tobacco. In the manifestation of all these new technologies, we are witnessing the revenge of tobacco following the smoking ban and other smoking cessation initiatives. The Public Health (Tobacco) Act 2002 was comprehensive. It was not just about the smoking ban; it was about getting rid of ten-packs and the sale of single cigarettes and putting cigarettes out of sight in shops in order that they were not next to confectionary items or children's sweets. In other words, it came down to denormalising tobacco. Vapes and other products constitute a counter-move aimed at renormalising tobacco. The health impacts are significant, serious and bad according to health experts. It bewilders me that products of this kind can get on the market without due diligence. We were talking about food and other stuff, and medicine has to go through the FDA and all sorts of other food safety authorities. This stuff gets on shelves very readily. It is doing terrible damage to our young people. The Minister of State, Deputy Murnane O'Connor, is bringing forward legislation to ban the use of vapes for young people under 18 and other measures. We need to re-examine the whole area, because it is creeping back in. Deputy Geoghegan referred to the primary care centre in Rathmines. He is right; it will have a significant impact on that community. We will continue to invest in primary care centres. As I said earlier, there has been somewhat of a transformation. It took a bit longer than people anticipated in terms of getting the finances right, be it private sector capital or public sector capital or a marriage of the two, but now we have about 180 primary care centres, I think, as I outlined in my opening remarks, plus other forms of community centres and of healthcare. That is something we will continue to do. I am not clear as to the mixed messages regarding Merlin Park to which Deputy O'Hara referred. My understanding is that the elective unit is going ahead. The Government committed to elective units in Galway and in Cork. They are at various stages. I am keeping a bit of pressure on for both, as well as the two earmarked for Dublin. These are commitments I want to see honoured. The sites are there. They are State owned, which should facilitate the development of the elective hospitals. The idea is to take all of that out of the acute then. It is not to be an acute hospital; it is to be an elective hospital. Not all but much of the work will be day-case procedures. Deputy Heneghan welcomed a lot. Inevitably, however, when there is a welcome, there is a but. The Deputy wants a timeline - so the narrative goes on. I will follow through on that. We are committed to all of those projects. I will check with the Minister for Health about the matter raised by Deputy Mark Ward regarding developmental checks in Dublin Mid-West more generally. He said a lot of children are not getting them until many months later. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-24/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:40+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-24