Cuirim fáilte roimh an mBille seo. Tá sé thar a bheith tábhachtach. Tá gá leis na rudaí atá sa Bhille. This is welcome legislation. I want to particularly paraphrase what my colleague, the Sligo county councillor, Fergal Nealon, said in the media this week. He talked about psychedelic nicotine pushers. He was talking about shops in Sligo town that his own child was trying to get him to go into, even though they were vape shops. He said that the windows are designed essentially like a cartoon shop, a Disney shop or something like that. It is 100% deliberate, I presume, but they certainly attract children who are into that kind of shopfront. The products in the window include toys placed next to these nicotine dispensing vapes. The point he is making is this: why on earth, if someone is selling these products, which are not supposed to be available to children, market them in this way if not to target that audience? It is not legal, which is an important point. One of the important aspects of this Bill is that we are going to attack the situation where we have an abuse of process, in essence, by certain shops throughout the country, which are definitely targeting younger audiences. They should not be. That should be shut down. I absolutely reject the argument made by some other speakers that this is actually about choice or eliminating choice, and that adults should be able to make choices about what they buy and consume in terms of the flavours, colours and whatever else. On the one hand, I do not have a problem with that, and the notion that adults can make that choice is a good thing. The difficulty is not that adults cannot make that choice. The difficulty is that this space is being invaded by these psychedelic nicotine pushers to inveigle their way not to the adults, but the children. At the moment, the figures show that 13% of 12- to 17-year-olds in this country are using vapes. They were not previously smokers. They are children who have been persuaded by marketing and advertising to use these products. All of the data suggests that they will go on not to avoid smoking, but to become smokers because these companies are forcing a situation where they become addicted to nicotine, and that habit will only grow from there. In contrast, only 7% of adults in Ireland are using vapes, as I understand it. They are former smokers or reformed smokers. I accept the role that vapes may play for smokers in reducing their dependency on a much more carcinogenic product, as far as we know, and getting them off cigarettes. That is fine. What this Bill has to be about is plugging the loopholes in the law that allow the traders in vapes to target younger audiences, to catch that captive audience, get them addicted to nicotine and then secure a market for life. We are where we were 70 years ago when it came to cigarettes but there is an opportunity for this legislation to get in and stop this from happening now. Plugging those loopholes is a very important thing. The Minister of State will be aware of what are called “big puff” vape devices. This is exactly the way in which these companies are getting around the regulations. The 2016 EU regulations make clear the limitations. They ensure that cartridges and tanks cannot exceed a volume of 2 ml, and attachments or refillable containers cannot exceed 10 ml. However, these big puff devices are circumventing that legislation. They are allowing the putting together of a product where people can clip on multiple different devices, which means the device is much more potent, but certainly much more voluminous than is allowed. They are getting through a loophole. Can the Minister of State assure me that the legislation is going to put in place plugs for all of those loopholes? We need to make sure there is not a situation in a year or two years’ time where we have put in place this legislation, and we are trying to protect children in particular, but there is then a situation where people find a vehicle to circumvent it. That is a difficult ask but the whole point is to try to see the future and see around every corner. What is really important is that we avoid situations like that. Is there anything in this legislation, for example, that is going to deal with big puff devices? These big puff devices also circumvent the legislation we passed just weeks ago on single-use devices, because although they are technically not covered by that legislation, as I understand it, they are frequently discarded afterwards, so they create the same environmental impact as single-use devices. The big thing about the big puff devices is that because they are selling in greater volume, they do so at a lower unit price, so there is a financial incentive for people to use the big puff devices instead of the standard ones. To come back to where I started, the big thing about this Bill is that we currently have a situation where there are what I would consider to be irresponsible retailers. I know we do not criticise people, and I will not name anyone, but every Member has in his or her constituency a vape shop like this on a main street somewhere that is clearly designed in a way that we would not expect to be consistent with cigarettes or with vapes that are aimed at adults. What we have are shops that are clearly targeted at a different audience. It is not acceptable. We know from other exposés that have been done by the media that children are getting into these vape shops. They are buying products they should not have access to. We know that 13% of the underage teenagers in the country are vaping. Let us stop that. Let us make sure we have a situation where we say it is not okay to target them with a product that is potentially carcinogenic, certainly bad for them and is definitely going to encourage them to smoke. It is not okay to target that at kids. We have to stop it. We have to make sure they act responsibly.

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