Madam, - The Minister for Health has decided to ban smoking in pubs from January 1st next year. This decision was arrived at after overwhelming evidence from many different reports and studies that showed a causal link between smoking and various diseases such as emphysema and cancer.
Instead of accepting that this ban is for the public good the publicans' representatives have run a campaign to try to change the Minister's decision. Now that a very questionable report has come out that challenges the accepted orthodoxy, the publicans' representatives latch on to it as if everything we have learned about smoking before this is no longer true. This is reprehensible. I hope the Minister will continue to disregard their opposition. - Yours, etc.,
BRENDAN McMAHON, Elmwood, Naas, Co Kildare