Deputy Gillian Toole: I will try to pick up where I left off. I was commending the recommendations of Meath Comhairle na nÓg. In the realm of drugs of addiction, alcohol, vaping, etc., the feedback from that and other youth groups around the country is that education is key. They want to know about the harms of different products on the market.

I sat in on the Joint Committee on Drugs Use a couple of weeks before Christmas. I am not a member of that committee but there was a very insightful and encouraging presentation by Ms Leanne Maher, a drug education worker with Canal Communities regional addiction service in Dublin 8. She gave the example of an escape rooms project funded from its own small budget. It is a youth initiative whereby there are four rooms covering cannabis, vaping, nitrous oxide and alcohol. Young people can complete a survey before going into the rooms and complete another on coming out. Then there is a debriefing session. After visiting the rooms, the learnings of the young people were doubled and in some cases tripled. That validates the young people's desire to know more about the possible benefits of products and, more important, the harms.

When I left off previously, I was going through the side effects of the ingredients in all vaping products, not just the disposable vapes we are primarily concerned with. I will raise this as a point of learning and as something for us to take note of in the vaping space in general. Let us discuss some of the ingredients. Propylene glycol is commonly known as anti-freeze. We would put it into the engine of the car. Would we dream of putting it into something we might inhale? It is there. There are formaldehyde and benzene, products with demonstrable cancer risks. There are heavy metals, including lead and nickel. The impacts of nickel include asthma, dermatitis, rhinitis, nausea and vomiting, and headaches; prolonged exposure can increase the risk of cancer. Lead contributes to behavioural and learning problems, hearing problems, fatigue and loss of appetite. We are getting a merger and possible confusion whereby what can be deemed to be behavioural issues for young people become completely intertwined with known side effects of products.

It is important to get right what this Bill is attempting to do and to ensure, particularly on Committee Stage, that there is robust scrutiny of it. We need to pay attention to the learnings and reviews that have taken place since June 2025, when the UK carried out a similar exercise. They are at the review stage now. I think everybody received the briefing note from Responsible Vaping Ireland. Two salient points are coming out of that review, the first of which is enforcement. We have to make sure the Health Service Executive, as the agency responsible for enforcement, is adequately resourced around both the inspection and the education sides of things. I suggest the remit of the quit line be extended to include quitting vapes. If the disposable vapes are removed, we know that, despite the age limit on vaping, there will be many young people dealing with physical and psychological withdrawal effects. Where will they go?

Another area that will have to be resourced is youth work organisations and the comhairlí na nóg, as well as the well-being teams in our secondary schools. There will be fall-out from this. There are the best of intentions but we have to be prepared and have the safeguards in place. That may involve using nicotine replacement therapy, NRT, which is nicotine replacement without those ancillary chemicals with dangerous side effects I have listed.

The other piece will be mental health supports. Apart from peer pressure and maybe wanting to look cool, if there is a mental and emotional health issue underlying use of a vaping product, we have to be ready and have a robust and well-resourced mental health safety net.

The key thing arising from today will be to learn from the loopholes identified in the UK, particularly around non-compliant manufacturers who have moved quickly to include charging ports and refill features in their products as a means of circumvention. The other point is delivering effective and enforceable legislation. It will be worth spending time on this. We cannot on the one hand be here debating at budget time the spend on health, be it public health or rehabilitative health, yet not be taking proper measures to ensure our respiratory and circulatory systems and our physical and emotional health are well resourced.

This is one of the stepping stones as a preventative measure.

Along the way, we have to listen to our young people, including the voices of the members of Comhairle na nÓg, drug rehabilitation teams and community drug and alcohol rehabilitation teams. They have their fingers on the pulse and their ears to the ground. I do not know whether the escape room concept can be funded from a health promotion perspective or through proceeds of crime funding but I was highly impressed. If possible, I ask the Minister of State and her officials to read the transcript of the Committee on Drugs Use. I will get the date and flag it with the Minister of State. I can send the video link to her. It is something I will explore and try to implement in County Meath.

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