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ALMOST THREE-QUARTERS OF people in Ireland want the legal age for the sale of tobacco raised from 18 to 21, new research shows.
The Irish Heart Foundation (IHF) says the findings send an overwhelming message to Government that the public wants decisive action to save a new generation from the “health catastrophe” of smoking – which claims almost 6,000 lives in Ireland every year.
The Ipsos MRBI poll for the charity coincides with an online conference attended by international tobacco control experts today. It follows on from research showing smoking among young people in Ireland is on the rise for the first time in a quarter of a century.
A total of 73% of the 1,029 people aged over 15 surveyed in the poll are in favour of raising the age for the sale of cigarettes to 21, with 26% disagreeing and 1% undecided.
In the 18-24 age group, 71% backed the proposal.
The IHF’s director of advocacy, Chris Macey, said: “One in every three young people who start smoking will die of a tobacco-related illness.
“For every death, a further 30 will suffer a smoking-related disease such as stroke, heart disease, cancer and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).
“It would be an utter dereliction of our duty of care not to protect our young people from the death and destruction caused by smoking. We have got to find an end game to tobacco addiction. If cigarettes were invented today, they would simply not be legal.”
The charity – which also wants the measure extended to e-cigarettes due to evidence of their gateway effect on smoking – said data showing an increase in teenage smoking strengthens the case for a tobacco ban for under-21s.
In 1995, the teen smoking rate in Ireland was 41%, which fell dramatically to 13.1% by 2015, but by 2019 had crept back up to 14.4%.
“The evidence strongly suggests that raising the age of sale will turn the tide back in the right direction, disrupting a high rate of smokers moving from casual use to addiction between the ages of 18 and 20,” Macey added.
We would be confident similar laws will work in Ireland due to the hugely positive impact of increasing the age of sale here in 2002 from 16 to 18.
“In the US, Tobacco 21 laws introduced in various states before it became federal law in 2019 reduced smoking in that age group by up to 33.9%. The US Institute of Medicine says 223,000 lives will be saved among those born between 2000-2019.
“We would be confident similar laws will work in Ireland due to the hugely positive impact of increasing the age of sale here in 2002 from 16 to 18.”
Macey argued that raising the age would not amount to a breach of people’s rights, stating that under-21s are already prohibited from activities such as adopting children, driving large passenger vehicles, supervising learner drivers and standing in national and European elections.
He will present the Ipsos MRBI research today at online conference Tobacco 21: The case for raising the legal age for the sale of tobacco in Ireland.
One of the speakers, Dr Emmet O’Brien, consultant respiratory physician at Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital, said lung function continues to grow through late adolescence and into the mid-twenties.
“Youth smoking both accelerates lung function decline and prevents the attainment of maximum lung size, thereby increasing the risk for chronic respiratory disease,” O’Brien added.
“Raising the minimum age of tobacco purchase to 21 will be an important milestone to protect the developing lung from the harmful effects of tobacco exposure, reduce the premature loss of lung function in youth smokers and mitigate against nicotine addiction at this critical stage.”
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Here’s what I don’t get.
The liquidation was done in order to allow the promissory note be exchanged with a long-term sovereign bond
The talk is that this is a good deal because the value of future money is less than today’s money, because of inflation.
Fine, I get that. So I did some calculations :-)
The vast majority of the interest on the bonds will be payable to the ICB, so it doesn’t leave the country or gets destroyed. So the taxpayers pay interest on the bonds which in turn is handed over to the ICB, which can release this money for growth and employment initiatives. So we’re paying the majority of the interest back to ourselves. Slightly less that 1% will be unrecoupable. That’s the theory, anyway.
Interesting idea that we’ve exchanged a debt for an accounting exercise. I’ve been looking for details on that (how much gets destroyed, for example) but haven’t found them yet…
The Irish Central Bank isn’t the Exchequer though, so I don’t think it’s true to say that they can ‘release’ the money for growth & employment. They can loan money to the state at (one would hope!) a favourable rate, but the state is still minus the repayments on the bonds….
It has to be an accounting exercise, as the whole task is to fix the accounts. The ICB created a pile of money from nothing, so the accounts became a joke. That’s why the ECB was so against a write-off or write-down, it leaves the accounts in a mess, with clean accounts we can’t have effective regulation of the euro zone, if without regs toon of the euro zone, the euro becomes a untrustworthy currency on the world markets, which is exactly what the ECB is mandated to prevent.
In theory they say the money will be released, but the details of “how” are not yet clear, at least not to me. I reckon you’re in the right track when you said it could take the form of loans St extremely low rates. If they are lending to the commercial banks, say to allow for mortgages and business loans, the ICB will need a means to enforce that the low interest is passed on the the borrower, and not used solely for the benefit of the commercial banks.
Great article, there hasn’t been enough independent coverage of this issue, all I can see is everyone saying how great the deal is, but no one is explaining why.
Isn’t it strange that this was done just as the Quinn family were in the process of joining the Dept of Finance and the Central Bank to their big case against IBRC. and now this highly questionable piece of legislation tries to ringfence the dirty secrets of the establishment in a further despicable attempt to deny the family natural justice by proceeding with a case that was ruled that they have a legitimate right to take.
Anglo Irish Bank should have been liquidated some years ago by Fianna Fail. It’s a shame on FF that they did not take corrective action when it should have been taken! The then regulator did not do his job properly but FF gave him a big pay off and a big pension. Shame on FF.
And shame on FG for converting it into a lifetime of sovereign debt.
They acted not on behalf if the Irish citizen once again…..
A pig with lipstick is still a bloody pig at the end if the day.
I would hope that freedom of information will eventually shed some light on all this ECB stuff. Between the 2008 guarantee and this its necessary to put any speculation of conspiracy theory’s to bed, if not today then before the next general election. We’re entitled to know.
Does this get Sean Quinn and his family off the hook?
No, cases brought on behalf of what was Anglo can continue, but case against Anglo are halted. So Quinn’s not safe from ICB /NAMA, but there assets held by ICB / Nama are safe from Quinn and other remaining creditors. Ultimately, this has to happen sooner or later, and it’s happened in a way that at least a chunk of taxpayer’s wealth that was funnelled into the zombie bant can be rescued..
..zombie bank can be rescued. Apologies.
@ Ciaran, no. Nama will take over the actions.
The stock reply to this question is set out by Nicholas and Peter, but at the very least, the legal capacity of NAMA to take the place of IBRC/Anglo/INBS will be challenged. If the Government has drafted the bill giving effect to the liquidation properly, most likely such a challenge will fail. But I wouldn’t be rushing to the bookies to bet the mortgage that they have. And I would doubt that the Quinns will even be first in the queue to make such a challenge. The courts themselves must have been getting sick of the endless stream of vindictive and spiteful cases involving Anglo, and may see this latest development as a way to draw a line under them all.
@ Garry, good reply and a balanced comment.
How is it fair that Anglo/Nama will still be able to chase Quinn for what they believe is there’s……when the case against Anglo and all the big guys involved in that case, is going to be dumped? The government knew that Quinn had a massive case that would shake the foundations of Anglo and severals in the Dáil. They had to make sure the liquidation went through in the night, for obvious reasons, but there was no reason to rush the clauses that went along with the liquidation. They were running scared and sneaklily, like rats in the night, they made sure that Quinn’s case would be scuppered. The population of the country have their heads turned to the liquidation,…and so they stamp out Quinn. Corrupt, inept, sneaky, cruel governing!
Shame shame shame on all those sitting around the table, drawing up clauses and intrinsics of the Act on Wednesday night.(Although we all know that these ‘little clauses’ were drawn up months ago) There is no integrity left in the Dáil. Dictatorship is alive in Ireland. We have no voice.
It does not get the Quinn family off, as cases by the IBRC carry on, while cases against have to end.
The decision to liquidate had to happen to get rid of the Anglo Irush tumour, but is a move that seems a bit, well, poorly explained.
In 2016, all this will be forgotten by many of the voters. Like Fianna Fail, Kenny’s voters will have “stockholm’s syndrome” as an advantage.
All we have to hope is that we get significant inflation, despite some prognostications of deflation or marginal inflation, that we will have a booming economy, hopefully not based on property speculation, that the principal can be found on the due dates, that our next two generations will be trapped to stay in Ireland and willing to pay the huge taxes required to pay the principal sums when due.
I will acknowledge one thing. The short term savings will ensure that magnificent salaries and munificent pensions will continue to be paid to the politicians and senior civil servants. That’s the important thing.
An unaffordable overdraft which was not enforceable has been converted to a 40 year bullet proof mortgage.
No one can predict inflation and economic progress for the next 40 years. No one knows for sure but the pointers are all towards lower salaries and wages so that we are competitive cheap labour and no one knows what State Ireland will be in 2038.
The honest answer is that this is an immoral deal and there is no one who knows if it will be a good deal.
It is spinning to assert that 20 billion has been saved. Only gullible people will swallow such nonsense.
The whole thing is as suspicious as the overnight saving of Anglo in the first place it’s hard to know what caused the plan to be rushed through in the night when supposedly the plan had been on the cards for months.
I wonder was it something to do with the promissory notes agreement with the ECB rather than anything else. Maybe for market stability reasons they had to have the bank liquidated before the ECB announces the plan but I don’t know
Probably because someone in the know told them the court case had an excellent chance of success. So to save face with their European “pals” noonan and Enda did this.
The answer is obvious. Didn’t Merkel advise about the increase in the VAT rate before the Minister for Finance did! A civil servant in Frankfurt disclosed the ” behind the scenes” deal before it could be implemented.
In that event the legislation had to be approved and sealed before the markets opened the following morning at 8.0AM.
Michael Noonan did Trojan work and should receive an accolade from the Irish Nation. A stroke of genius!
The only thing Moonan did was circumvent a Supreme Court case he and his cronies were aware they could lose.
@Dermot O’Reilly Michael Noonan put the interests of his Bilderberg pals before those of the Irish people. I feel sorry for people like you – seemingly intelligent people ,who have fallen for the spin – hook, line and sinker. The harsh reality is that Noonan and his buddies have effected a massive heist, and the ordinary people of Ireland will be paying back billions of debt that wasn’t ours for generations to come. Treason!
Spot on, M Bowe. I think it was all about that case and the impact on the next election…..
Arthur Beesley said in today’s Irish Times:
“If the main financial benefit for Ireland is to reduce the national borrowing requirement by €20 billion over the next 10 years, the essential kicker for the ECB is that former Anglo will no longer be leaning on it for €40 billion in short-term funding known as exceptional liquidity assistance. The overnight liquidation of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, as Anglo is now known, essentially means that the ECB gets to seize its collateral for these loans.”
Even though Draghi played stum, it’s clear the ECB imposed conditions, including this one.
If inflation brings the cost of this debt down as Noonan explained yesterday, then using his lesson about been a teacher, that after 20 years his original mortgage premium was equal to his months salary….I think teachers can look forward to monthly salaries of 300,000 euro in 2038. Great money if you can get it.
@ Thomas Roche, good context.
It seems to me that the government just made sure that the debt related to IBRC is now impossible to write off as it is transformed into bonds. Or am I missing something? …. Was there an alternative in how to deal with this debt? How about a true liquidation (without this swap) and a default of the IBRC without compensation to its creditors (or only to a limited degree)? Why didn’t they try to get rid off the debt?
Because they couldn’t. The last government had guaranteed the debt. The liquidation did not add anything to the government’s liability, although it did crystalize it.
It is extremely unlikely that ECB could have legally done a deal if Anglo had not been liquidated.
There is nothing particularly noteworthy, shocking or embarrassing about liquidating a zombie company. Companies are liquidated every day of the week, with no notice.
I would have thought that IBRC had to be liquidated in order to facilitate the the transfer of assets to NAMA, IRBC is in effect far from bust, its sitting on 14bn of real assets , not to mention a loan book , not all of which is toxic. ( ie loans to O’Brien etc) My understanding under company law is that assets cannot be moved out of a company ( ie to NAMA) , in essence leaving debt, (or attempting to transfer debt elsewhere). Hence this is in effect a members voluntary winding up. In that case the liquidator can “dispose” of the business in any way practical as long as the preferential creditors are looked after.
Secondly it is reported that Reuters actually contacted the Dept of Finance and sought a confirmation or denial , and a denial was not forthcoming. If IRBC wasnt liquidated in the middle of the night , all the creditors not on the preferential list ( and potentially the employees and uncle tom cobbly and all ) would be in the High court demanding the Court injunct the process and stop the liquidation. That would have put a right ki-bosh on Dragis little message, and IRBC would be in the courts for months.
Its worth noting that the Act is probably unconstitutional, its overrode the Transfer of Undertakings legislation , it rode over asset and property rights ( which might have prevented IRBC from transferring certain assets) , of course by the time the challenges are heard , theres no going back.
I must say , its very handy to be a company with the minister as a shareholder, dont like something in company law, hell change it all.
The employees in particular are only getting statutory severance, ( as is all that you get in a liquidation), but they are entitled ( or were under the Transfer of undertaking) to be transferred to any new employer to bring all their entitlements with them. I suspect they will just be bought off. The sums involved being a tiny tiny fraction of the amounts in question.
It had to be a liguidation and that liguidation had to be done in an instant ,I suspect it had nothing to do with the Reuters story and everything to do with the ECB making an announcement the following morning. To suggest the Gov didnt know what was going on , as some commentators have said, is nonsense. it was all agreed before hand.
All in all a good deal given the circumstances. Dont blame this deal, the Gov Had its hands tied behind its back by the Lenihan guarantee. That was the decision since the founding of the state.
If they can make a new law to circumvent and over-ride the laws that already exist, why couldn’t they over-ride the guarantee from 2008? … Wouldn’t an isolated default of this company be better as it would greatly helped the country?
A Nation in Bondhood.
To suggest we and in Bond now and weren’t already in it is nonsense, the State issued a legal and total bank guarantee, it simply isnt possible to undo that. Iceland didnt guarantee its banks and could let some of them fail, Brian Lenehan took the worst decision in the history of the state, This Gov is just dealing the hand it was handed.
People talking about default as full of hot air, the banking system almost completely relies on emergency liquidity from the ECB, if that dried up and your PASS machine wouldnt give you money , I suspect many would forgot about “burning bondholders – like”
Point out any , repeat any, sovereign debt the ECB has written down!!, it simply cant, its direct Monetary Financing and the laws of the ECB , which I dont agree with , simply dont allow it. Blame the Germans for that.
Dave,
The Greeks have defaulted 4 times and their ATMs still function.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/david-mcwilliams/ecb-wont-go-nuclear-if-we-default-on-promissory-note-look-at-greece-29051719.html
Two quotes. And.
have your say