February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Speaking at the College of St. Rose in Albany, and accompanied by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the taoiseach said that the Irish government’s position is that the controversial ban would go ahead.
Ahern’s comments echoed those of his colleague, Irish Minister for Health Micheal Martin, who visited New York last week and said that meetings with Mayor Michael Bloomberg had convinced him that a total smoking ban, such as the one Bloomberg signed earlier this year, is the correct approach.
Ahern and Martin affirmed their commitment to an outright ban against the bemusing backdrop of another NYC mayor, Rudy Giuliani, who commented that he thought the total ban was too strict while visiting Ireland last week.
The Bloomberg ban stands foursquare on the issue of public health and the mayor refuses to concede that bars and restaurants may have lost business since the ban.
Likewise, Martin and Ahern say a total ban in Ireland will save lives and reduce health-care costs.
Cancer, Ahern said, is the “largest killer” in Ireland and that this is the primary reason for the proposed ban.
“We lose several thousand people a year [to cancer],” Ahern said.
The taoiseach said that while Ireland ranked high in terms of European economies, the country performs at the low end of the scale when it comes to preventing cancer deaths.
The aim of the ban, Ahern said, is to protect the health of Ireland’s workforce.
Irish workers, he said, should not be exposed to passive smoke and smoke inhalation.
The taoiseach did not comment critically on the remarks made by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in Ireland last week that had sparked a flareup in the debate over the smoking ban in New York.
Ahern confined himself to describing Giuliani as a friend who he had met in Kenmare, Co. Kerry.
Giuliani said that he does not think a total ban on smoking is as good an idea as simply having restricted smoking areas in bars and restaurants, the restriction that he signed in 1995.
“It limited pretty dramatically the places you could smoke, but it left open some places where people who enjoy smoking would be allowed to do it,” Giuliani said.
He also highlighted one of the consequences of the Bloomberg ban that many people have said they find upsetting: the congregating of smokers on sidewalks outside bars, where they smoke, chat and often present a quality-of-life problem late at night.
“If you say, ‘well, people can’t smoke inside,’ ” said Giuliani, “then they smoke outside. And then outside becomes more congested.
“I think government should provide the ability for people who want to make a choice to make that choice.”
Asked if there were any chance he would mitigate the smoking ban planned to take effect in Ireland after Jan. 1, Martin said, “absolutely not,” and added that speaking with Bloomberg had made him more resolute than ever that a total ban is the best policy.
Martin noted that the smoking ban is working well in New York, based on what Mayor Bloomberg had told him. He also said that enforcing the ban in Ireland would not be a problem, using his 500-or-so health inspectors who would slap offending bars with