I move:
That Seanad Éireann, noting that the use of tobacco and the abuse of alcohol represent the two biggest threats to public health in this country; recognising the right of people to work and socialise in a healthy smoke free atmosphere; demands that the Minister for Health and Children implement an immediate ban on smoking in licensed premises; condemns the efforts of lobbyists and some politicians to prevent the introduction of such a ban; calls for the immediate introduction of a ban on direct or indirect alcohol advertising in any communication medium which has a significant audience of people under 18 years of age and calls for appropriate changes in the law to ensure that the Garda have all the powers they need to detect the sale of alcohol to minors, to prosecute persons who are responsible for such sales and to seek the immediate and, where appropriate, permanent closure of premises where such sales take place.
I am an instinctive libertarian, even though libertarianism is associated more with the extreme right than with the position on the left that I may claim to occupy. I know many Members on the other side of the House enjoy suggesting that I have no real entitlement to claim to be of the left since I do not have holes in the soles of my shoes or some such nonsense. Nevertheless I am of the left and am an instinctive libertarian and very reluctant to restrict people's freedoms to do much as they wish. Indeed, without betraying any secrets, at our parliamentary party meeting today we had a letter from Barnardos about taking a pledge not be seen having an alcoholic drink on our hands in public. I took great exception to this. It was an extraordinary demand to make.
There are two things involved in our motion. I actually assumed that the motion would be agreed by the Government and I am astonished that an amendment arrived as late as about one o'clock today. Given that we mere members of the Opposition come under considerable pressure if we cannot produce a motion by Thursday evening, one would expect greater speed of response from the Government.
Nothing will fill a parish hall or school hall quicker than a talk about drugs. Tell parents at a school that there is to be a talk about drugs and they will be hanging out of the rafters. Tell them there is to be a talk about tobacco and they will not turn up. Tell them there is a talk about alcohol and they will probably turn up in reasonable numbers. Drugs can produce a response like no other issue. I want to talk about the drugs of choice of the people of Ireland and the ones that are killing significant numbers of people, the first because of its inherently insidious nature and the second because of the extent to which we have become a society of abusers.
It is actually difficult for a member of the Roman Catholic Church to say this but tobacco is inherently harmful. It may serve a purpose in nature but it is, of its nature, inherently harmful. I do not know any smokers who really believe that smoking does them any good. Many of them would maintain that continuing to smoke is the lesser of two evils, but that is not the same as doing them any good. This is a fundamental difference between tobacco and alcohol which I will come back to.
It is hardly worth taking up the time of the House with the statistics but the most horrendous statistic I came across in preparing for this debate is from a European study available on the Internet which provides a country profiles database for Ireland. It suggests that the total number of deaths which could be attributed to smoking in this country between 1950 and 2000 was about 250,000. That is the sort of figure that should make anybody think carefully. It is probably a conservative figure because nowadays we quote a figure of around 6,000 deaths per year.
If all smokers retreated into a little room on their own and smoked themselves and other smokers to death I might very much regret that fact and might want to do as much as possible to prevent it, but it would not be an intrusion upon the health of the rest of us. The truth is that the exposure on a regular basis to other people's smoke can increase the risk of a variety of tobacco-related ailments by a factor of between 30% and 40%. Research is probably beginning to show that the figure is higher than that. It is hard to believe now that in theatres 30 or 40 years ago the entire audience would feel perfectly free to blow smoke in the direction of the unfortunate actors. It is so unthinkable nowadays. Having to breathe in smoke in cinemas was a regular feature until perhaps ten years ago. I used to have to inhale smoke in a restaurant until quite recently. When I still have to breathe in smoke in a pub it puts me at risk, first of all.
The same logic that prohibited smoking in theatres, cinemas, a good part of restaurants, the place where I work and many other areas of activity demands that people who insist on smoking cannot be allowed to do so anywhere that people want to socialise or, in particular, any place where others have to work. The first part of our motion, which is about tobacco and the extraordinary damage it does to public health, recognises no more than what the Government amendment does, that people have a right to work and socialise in a clean, healthy, smoke-free atmosphere. We wanted to encourage the Government because rumours and newspapers stories have it that there is an increasing lobby both from the vintners and within one of the Government parties that seeks to dilute the Minister for Health and Children's commitment to ban smoking in licensed premises. All the organisations concerned about tobacco-related public health, whether the groups concerned about cancer or heart disease, have been in touch with all Members of the Oireachtas demanding that we ensure this ban is carried through in full and on time.
It is an outrage to pretend that it is somehow an imposition. The argument I have heard is that it is unenforceable in licensed premises. I was in New York comparatively recently and ended up in a bar which was probably more of a student bar than somebody of my age should have been in – it was an accident. It was a noisy, crowded, young persons' bar. One after another, people got up from their places, went outside the door, smoked a cigarette and came back in. It was an extraordinary experience to end up in a pub in which there was no smoke and suddenly to discover that it is the smell, the taste and the feel of smoke which affronts, not confronts, one the minute one walks inside the door of a pub. In that most libertarian of societies, they have succeeded in banning smoking in public houses, licensed premises and in bars. There is no reason we should not do so here. I, and my party, fully support the Minister for Health and Children in his determination to do so. I cannot understand why parties which support the Minister find it impossible to carry through the logic and to identify the wrongdoing of lobbyists and some politicians who would attempt to prevent the introduction of such a ban. That is inherently wrong.
In regard to enforcement, if publicans say they could not enforce a ban on smoking in their premises – such an obvious and visible thing – how in God's name can I believe that they can enforce rules about under age drinking, which are far more difficult to enforce given the difficulty establishing and proving people's age? If they do not have the will, the organisation or the ability to enforce a ban on smoking, then, manifestly, they will not have the will, the organisation or the ability to enforce a ban on under age drinking.
That leads me to the second of our drugs of choice – alcohol. The tragedy of tobacco, and particularly alcohol, is that while it took us perhaps 50 years to recognise what is now so obviously true, that is, that tobacco smoke is inherently unhealthy, we have known for many a long year that the abuse of alcohol is a social harm. Let us remember that alcohol is a good thing which makes people convivial, sociable and agreeable but 25% of all admissions to accident and emergency departments are alcohol related. Some 13% of people who attend accident and emergency departments are clinically intoxicated.
There is manifest evidence that this country has a huge problem of under age drinking, yet the section of the Intoxicating Liquor Act 2000 which required that suppliers of alcohol for consumption off the premises had to be identified on the container has not been implemented three years later. Gardaí cannot sit in a pub unidentified and sort out whether under age people are being served. Every parent in every town and city knows where their under age children can be served. I say this with respect to the Garda Síochána but the only people in towns and cities who do not know the names of the pubs where people under age can get served seem to be the Garda Síochána – everybody else knows. I know the names of such pubs in Cork. The last time I said this I got a phone call from a senior official of the Garda Síochána who said he did not know. When I told him they were all raided on Saturday night, he did not need me to tell him that.
There is a lack of political will on the issues of tobacco and alcohol. The Minister for Health and Children has the political will but I am beginning to wonder whether his Government colleagues have a similar political will.