Northern Ireland is to introduce a smoking later this year, it was confirmed today, but a decision on whether to include all buildings open to the public has yet to be made.
The British Government was under fire tonight from health campaigners and politicians after announcing there will be a decision later this year whether Northern Ireland should have a full or partial smoking ban.
Northern Ireland Office health minister Shaun Woodward will decide in the autumn whether there will be a blanket ban on smoking in all public buildings or a partial one allowing smoking in pubs which do not serve food.
But Mr Woodward, a former smoker who quit his habit of 20 cigarettes a day in March, was accused of losing his nerve over a total ban, even though 91 per cent of 70,000 people in a Government consultation exercise in the province said they wanted it.
Mr Woodward told health service chiefs: "The remaining few months will be about whether it is a total ban or a partial ban.
"And we have to examine how to enforce such a ban. We want the public on our side. We have to look at how such a comprehensive ban would affect businesses which depend on a licensed trade, on hotels, on the tourist trade, and what about prisons? Psychiatric institutions? That won't take long."
Northern Ireland Chest Heart and Stroke Association chief executive Andrew Dougal welcomed the results of the consultation but insisted the partial ban was unacceptable.
"The English fudge, where smoking is permitted in some public bars and not in others, has no appeal for the Northern Ireland public," he said. "Such a policy will drive food off the menu in those pubs in deprived areas and so cause even more health problems for the marginalised in our society."
The cancer charity, Action Cancer, said while it was a step in the right direction for the minister to say there would be a definite partial ban, only a complete ban would protect the health of people in Northern Ireland from the risks of passive smoking.
Former nationalist SDLP employment and learning minister Carmel Hanna, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams and Tom Campbell of the cross-community Alliance Party also supported a complete ban.
The minister's decision to take time before announcing the type of ban he will introduce was welcomed, however, by the Federation of Retail Licensed Trade.
PA