Sir, - I refer to the letter of Dr Fenton Howell, Chairman of ASH (December 9th). Dr Howell omits to state that the report of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children entitled "Health and Smoking": A National Anti-Smoking Strategy prepared by me as Rapporteur to the Committee and laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas in November 1999 advocated annual tax increases on tobacco as a means of reducing smoking levels, in particular amongst young people and proposed the removal of tobacco from the Consumer Price Index.
At a time when there are 7,000 smoking related deaths annually in Ireland and approximately 40 per cent of young Irish women are addicted to nicotine and smoking daily, it is particularly disappointing that the Minister for Finance failed to impose additional tobacco taxes and failed to remove tobacco products from the basket of items from which the Consumer Price Index is calculated.
Sadly, Dr Howell is not correct when he states that the Minister for Finance gave a "declaration of intent" to remove tobacco from the CPI. The Minister in the Dail merely acknowledged that a "number of calls had been made for tobacco to be excluded in calculating our inflation rate" and stated that he saw "merit in this proposition" and was accordingly asking his Department to examine the issue further with the Central Statistics Office. The Minister did not explain why such examination was not undertaken in the 13 months that have elapsed since publication of the Joint Oireachtas Committees Report on Smoking.
In the context of the Tanaiste's acknowledgment in the Dail onBudget night that the only reason for not increasing tobacco taxes was for fear of further fuelling inflation, it is clear that the present Government has no coherent or comprehensive policy to tackle the health scourge of nicotine addiction and youth smoking. - Yours, etc.,
Alan Shatter, T.D., Fine Gael spokesperson for Justice, Equality and Law Reform
Dail Eireann,
Dublin 2.