Pubs will be next in smoking clampdown
January 1996
Following the introduction of more restrictions on smoking in public places, the Department of Health is set to open negotiations with vintners about tackling the problem of passive smoking in pubs.
The Department is anxious to introduce some system which will drastically reduce the incidence of passive smoking in pubs, but formulating realistic regulations seems set to be a most difficult task.
Wexford publican Des Whelan, who is secretary of the Wexford and District Vintners Association, said regulations restricting smoking in pubs would be very difficult to enforce.
He said it will be a lot more difficult to formulate regulations restricting smoking in pubs than it was for restaurants. ‘It is easy to section off a restaurant because people are seated, but in a pub, people are moving around,’ he said.
Mr Whelan added that it might be possible to introduce some sort of smoking restriction in large pubs, but it would be virtually impossible to do so in small licensed premises. ‘How would you have a no smoking section in a pub that only holds 40 people?’ he asked.
He went on to say that a more realistic approach to tacking passive smoking could lie in insisting that pubs have adequate smoke extraction and air purifier systems in place.
Mr Whelan added that Wexford’s publicans haven’t formally discussed the issue yet, but would be doing so when there is a proposal before them.
Launching the new controls on smoking last month, Junior Health Minister Brian O’Shea said ‘ the new regulations will contribute to protecting the public from the harmful effects of passive smoking and to promoting a smoke-free environment for which there is an increasing public demand’.
The new controls are in support of the target set in the National Health Strategy, which aimes to reduce the proportion of the population who are smokers from 27% to 20% by the year 2000.
Following the introduction of the latest regulations, smoking is now completely prohibited in a large number of public places, and appropriate notices must be put in place to indicate this.
These include public offices, meeting rooms and corridors in all buildings owned or occupied by the State or State bodies; pre-schools, universities, day nurseries and play groups; kitchens and food preparation areas in hotels, restaurants, cafés, pubs, and delicatessens, supermarkets, grocery stores and butcher’s premises; waiting rooms in rail and bus stations; cinemas, theatres, and concert halls.
Other restricted areas include indoor sports centres, the games area in bowling alleys, bingo halls and bridge centres, State-owned art galleries and museums, public libraries, hospitals, nursing homes and other health facilities, doctors and dentists waiting rooms, retail pharmacies, public areas in banks and building societies, hairdressing salons, on all buses and on the DART and Arrow train services, and in taxis and hackney cabs.