February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The defiant gesture will give Fianna Fail delegates an advance taste of the ban’s outcome because the party’s 67th Ard Fheis will be held in Killarney this weekend.
The move puts the pub owners on a collision course with Minister of Health Micheal Martin.
Martin warned the law will be applied to all establishments. “That’s the bottom line,” he said. Pub owners could face fines if they let people light up inside their establishments.
Joining the ranks of the mutineers is colorful independent Kerry TD Jackie Healy-Rae, himself a pub owner, who said he didn’t think he could get his customers to stop smoking even if he wanted to.
Enforcement could become a major issue if, as expected, there are more regional revolts.
According to a Lansdowne Market Research poll for the publicans, 84 percent of rural bar workers want compromises on the minister’s plan, with most favoring no-smoking areas and better ventilation requirements.
The bar owners’ groups — the Vintners’ Federation of Ireland and the Licensed Vintners Association, who together represent almost 7,000 publicans nationally — regard a total ban a “excessive and unnecessary.”
Tadg O’Sullivan, VFI’s chief executive, said there is “undeniable concern” about the effect the ban will have on their livelihoods.
“The decision taken by the members of the VFI in Kerry to refuse to enforce the smoking ban is simply a manifestation of the frustrations they feel that democracy is simply not operating in this issue,” he said.
“They see this unnecessary ban as devastating their businesses and costing jobs. They know that the ban is excessive and they know the compromise proposals put forward are more balanced and more reasonable.”
Despite the pressure, including objections from a number of junior ministers, TDs and senators, there is no sign the government is for turning.
Responding to questions from Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny about objections to the ban voiced at a Fianna Fail parliamentary party meeting, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said the ban in pubs, restaurants and hotels would go ahead in January. He told the Dail there had been “enormous support” for the policy at the meeting.
“The prohibition was announced a year in advance of the starting period to allow a reasonable time for employers, businesses and people to adopt the changes required,” he said. “Being able to work and socialize in a clean, smoke-free environment will have health benefits for all concerned.”
One of the leading backbench dissidents, former junior minister Noel Davern, appeared to accept that the ban was inevitable when he told RTE he expected to be smoking in the street outside his local Tipperary pub in he New Year.
“I’m going to get colds, flus, everything else, standing outside the pub in the winter,” he said. “I’m not going to like it, but I’m going to have to do it.”
Meanwhile, research for the government’s Office of Tobacco Control estimates smoking is costing the economy between one and