Public Health (Single-Use Vapes) Bill 2025: Committee and Remaining Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-07 ============================================================ Martin Conway (IND), Administrative Panel I echo the welcome to Niall and Gillian Quinn, and the commendation on the great work they do. I welcome the Minister of State. I have spoken extensively in this House on the need for tougher regulations on vaping and the detrimental effect that vaping is having on a generation of young people in this country. I strongly believe we have been far too slow in dealing with this issue. In the last term I had rows with the former Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly, over his absolute snail's pace movement to deal with this. At least the Minister of State is dealing with it in a much more efficient and determined way. Of course I would have liked to have seen an awful lot more in this legislation. Personally, I believe that vapes should be banned and that if a person requires a vape to give up nicotine and cigarettes then it should be by prescription. That is not an unprecedented move. That is how it is done in Australia. People can vape in Australia but they require a prescription from their GP to acquire a vape. A prescription is only granted on the basis that a person requires a vape to give up smoking. I believe that the proliferation of vape shops the length and breadth of this country, in every town and village, has destroyed the streetscape. Vape shops, coupled with mobile phone shops and other such outlets but particularly vape shops, are very unpleasant. I have quoted extensively the situation in my own county of Clare. When I was a child there was a very famous music shop in Ennis called the Record Rack where we all went to buy CDs, tapes, etc. It is horrendous to think that the old Record Rack is now a vape shop. Around the corner there is a number of vape shops on Abbey Street and O'Connell Street. In any shopping centre in this country there are vape shops. There are vape kiosks. There are vapes advertised in SuperValu and all of the big retail outlets and they are glorious looking. The signage for vapes is in your face. The situation will not improve until such time as we are bold and brave and decide that we will treat vapes the same way as we treated cigarettes and put them under the counter. We must get rid of these awful shops from our main streets and do what Micheál did. In March 2004, Micheál Martin banned smoking in pubs and restaurants and I recall the reaction of vintners. I have great time for the vintners and they do great work but at the time they said that they run the parties because they have their meetings in their premises. At that stage, the majority of people probably were against the smoking ban but now 98% of the population would oppose a proposal to re-introduce smoking in pubs and restaurants. --- 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/2026-07-07/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:09+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-07