Tobacco Control Measures Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-06 ============================================================ Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (FF), Carlow-Kilkenny I thank the Senator for his contribution. There is a long and proud tradition in our country, across all political parties, of introducing strong tobacco control measures. That started with a workplace smoking ban in 2004 introduced by Micheál Martin, and has continued with successive Governments building on that achievement to further drive down our smoking rates. As the Senator will know, Stephen Donnelly was Minister at the time this legislation was brought in, in 2023. We are investing in our efforts to tackle the harms caused by tobacco. We have now approved 30 extra environmental health officers to be recruited in the coming months. This will help with enforcement of the laws around selling cigarettes and vapes to under-18s, as well as our new laws on the packaging and flavours when this measure comes into effect. I am working on my second Bill now. In addition, funding for the HSE quit programme has increased from €13 million in 2021 to €21 million in 2024. This includes more than doubling the number of stop smoking clinics and the roll-out of free nicotine replacement therapy in 2022. This led to a record number accessing the quit service and higher rates of successful quit attempts. More shops selling cigarettes and vapes would mean an increase in the risk of young people starting to smoke and of people who have tried to quit relapsing. Smoking kills one in every two smokers and contains the addictive drug nicotine. Sadly, many of those who currently smoke started to do so as children. Smoking causes an enormous range of preventable illnesses and disabilities in addition to its death toll. Our licence system and its fees are designed to reflect the enormous harm. I thank the Senator for highlighting this issue today and I thank the Cathaoirleach for letting me finish. --- 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/seanad/2026-05-06/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:54+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-06