SECTION 1 Question proposed: "That section 1 stand part of the Bill."

Deputy David Cullinane: I want to make a few brief remarks, if I can. We will get through this very quickly. Obviously, I support the Bill. For a long time, I have been calling for a ban on single-use vapes and it makes sense for obvious reasons. There is an amendment that I have down that we will get to. I suspect the Government will not be accepting it but I will speak briefly to it.

I want to quickly raise issues regarding a proposed parallel Bill that was signed off on by Cabinet yesterday, as I understand it, or at least the heads of which have been signed off on. There are some elements of that proposed Bill that I support because the thrust of it is that the vaping industry is targeting children in an unacceptable way and there is a move, as I understand it, by Government to ban flavours in relation to vapes. There are other elements that may be in that proposed Bill as well.

I want to flag one concern I have in this area. I believe that anything that targets children, of course, we should intervene in, and we should act. There are all sorts of flavours. There are dozens of flavours of these vapes, many of which target children, for example, bubble gum and the obvious ones. There are others that are less targeted at children, but actually adults use them. I have engaged with many vape smokers and they tell me that if the ban was to apply to all flavours with the exception of tobacco, that would be a problem for them. The Minister of State should bear in mind that vaping is a cessation tool for some people to move away from smoking and what we do not want is that those people would go back to smoking if the only option is a tobacco-flavoured vape. If you have a different flavour that is not targeted at children but is being used by adults, that might be a step too far.

I am merely saying that now. Obviously, we will have time at the health committee or whatever way the heads of Bill will come before us. That is not to take away from the substance of this Bill, which I support. As I said, I have one amendment that I will briefly speak to.

Deputy Pádraig Rice: I want to voice my objection to the process here. It is poor form. We had it repeated last week, and again this week, in terms of the Government taking Committee Stage of legislation in the Dáil as opposed to at committee. As Chair of the health committee, I received a letter essentially telling me that my committee was too busy to even consider this issue, without any real engagement with the committee about our schedule or willingness to take this at committee. We would have been willing to take this at committee - it will be a short debate. We could have done this at committee. We did not need to keep all the TDs later here tonight to do this. We had it last week on the International Protection Bill. It is poor form. We have a dysfunctional Dáil. We need to take seriously how we order business in the House because it is not good enough and it needs urgent reform. I would ask the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach to pass that on to the Ceann Comhairle because it is an important point.

I also welcome the progress on this Bill and the other proposed legislation. The two probably should have come together in one. However, like Deputy Cullinane, I welcome the move that has been made there and echo the sentiment. There is potential to limit it to maybe two flavours, or menthol, mint or something else, in order to ensure that people use vapes as a cessation tool. I welcome that progress having been made, in particular, that children will not be targeted by the advertising of those kinds of flavours because there is a real issue. I had a transition year student in my office recently who talked to me about 12-year-olds vaping in school and passing vapes around a primary school. It is a real issue. We have left it go too long and I am glad to see we have got progress on it tonight.

Deputy Paul Nicholas Gogarty: I support the Bill. In terms of the general debate, we had the discussion already on Second Stage in terms of having everything put together in one piece of legislation and I will not go back into that.

There has been a lobby coming through about the flavours and the suggestion that people will go back to smoking tobacco. I suppose the key point to make there is they are already used to the tobacco taste and smell, so why would it make them go back? I take on board what Deputy Rice said about menthol because we already have menthol cigarettes but the whole idea about getting rid of the flavours is to stop young people getting into vapes, which the evidence has shown they are getting into in their own right, separate from ever thinking about smoking. We should not be fooled by the campaign. We should get on with the legislation. There have been suggestions that in Denmark people have found ways of getting flavoured vapes through other means so we will have to be able to police this going forward anyway...

[Click here for the full debate on the Oireachtas website]