Environmental health officers have warned the Minister for Health that key posts to enforce the smoking ban nationwide are still not in place. Liam Reid reports.
Although the officers have said the new regulations are both workable and necessary, they have told Mr Martin that up to 16 of the proposed 41 environmental health officer posts necessary to enforce the ban remain unfilled because of health cutbacks.
They also told the minister of their concerns that 10 posts of director of tobacco control in each health board, announced by the minister in November 2001, had not been filled due to funding problems.
Ms Ann Marie Part, spokeswoman for the Environmental Health Officers Association, said the 41 posts had to be filled before January "as a minimum" to enforce the ban.
The association has also sought a resource need assessment to be carried out immediately after the ban comes into effect.
Describing the meeting as "positive and constructive", Ms Part said the EHOA believed the ban was necessary and feasible.
A compromise ban, which would allow closed smoking areas, would be "unworkable", she said.
"It would leave too many grey areas for interpretation and it would leave it very difficult to enforce and protect employees."
She also described the argument that ventilation removed the risk of tobacco smoke as "spurious".
The EHOA's counterparts in England and Scotland, the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health and the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland, have also added their support for the Irish ban.