The decision to fund the Government strategy on reducing heart disease with money from the tobacco industry and smokers has been welcomed by ASH, the antismoking lobby.
The group said it was an excellent first step and the Minister for Health should consider it to pay for other initiatives, such as combating cancer, where tobacco is a contributory cause.
According to ASH, Mr Cowen could raise the £150 million needed for the strategy in a year by raising the price of a packet of cigarettes by around 70p. At present the Exchequer gets £700 million annually on revenue from tobacco products, with 75 per cent of the price of a packet of cigarettes going to the Government.
Speaking at the opening of the National Cardiovascular Health Strategy yesterday, Mr Cowen said that since it was a budgetary matter he was unable to be specific about the amount which would be levied on the tobacco industry or added to the price of tobacco.
Despite the tradition of the Department of Finance refusing to allocate taxes for specific purposes, Mr Cowen said, he had reached a "tacit agreement" on the issue.
He said smoking was a well-established cause of heart disease. The Government had agreed in principle with his funding proposal, as revealed in The Irish Times last Wednesday.
The chairman of ASH, Dr Luke Clancy, said the Minister was to be congratulated on his overall strategy. The idea was long overdue, he said. The group wants a £1 increase on a packet of 20 cigarettes at the next budget. The Irish Tobacco Manufacturers' advisory committee, the umbrella group for the tobacco industry, said in a statement yesterday it was considering the implications of the proposal. The industry had not been previously consulted. "The companies note that taxes on tobacco products in Ireland are already third-highest in the world."
At the launch of the strategy, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said that cardiovascular disease, which is diseases of the heart and blood vessels, was "a scourge on modern society".
"It is unacceptable that a largely preventable disease such as this impacts so heavily on us from a health, social and economic point of view," he said, adding that he believed it was possible to make a real impact by 2010.
The report, Building Healthier Hearts, outlines recommendations for a 10-year programme to improve cardiovascular health.
In Ireland these diseases accounted for 43 per cent of all deaths in 1997. The mortality for Irish men under the age of 65 is almost double that of the EU, and as the age range increases Ireland has the lowest life expectancy in the EU, with heart disease being the single biggest contributor. "I find it wholly unacceptable to have such high rates of illness from a disease which is largely preventable. There is nothing inevitable about our high levels of cardiovascular disease. This report allows us to begin to make serious inroads into this killer disease," Mr Cowen said.
At a minimum, he said, the medium-term objective should be to bring levels of premature death in line with the EU average. In the long term the State should reduce rates to those of the best EU performers.
He is to appoint a task force to oversee the implementation of the report, as well as the establishment of an advisory forum made up of medical experts.
The strategy group chairman, Mr Michael Jacob, said there was a strong view within the group that the implementation of the report in its entirety would ensure that deficiencies and inequalities within the existing services would be rectified.
"As you now know, the report has established that much needs to be done and in particular that it requires the full commitment and co-operation of most Departments of Government and many public, private and voluntary agencies to make it work."
The Irish Heart Foundation yesterday welcomed the initiative. Its chief executive, Mr Paddy Murphy, said it was encouraging to see that the Taoiseach had introduced the report. "Hopefully this indicates full Government commitment to its implementation," he said.