Smoking ban’s start date pushed back until Easter

THE date for introducing the smoking ban in pubs and restaurants has been put back until Easter.

The Irish Examiner understands that the ban will take up to eight weeks to come into effect once the Department of Health gets the go-ahead for its implementation from the European Commission at the end of next week.

Working on that timescale, the ban should be in place in late March or in the first week of April.

The ban on smoking in the workplace was originally meant to have begun yesterday but was delayed after Health Minister Micheál Martin after consulting with the Attorney-General granted exemptions to prisons, hospitals, nursing homes and guest rooms last November.

Once those amendments were notified to the European Commission the Government was obliged to wait for three months during which other states could raise objections.

The three-month period for the first of those exemptions (that of prisons) will expire next week and it is expected the minister will immediately announce the date for the commencement of the ban.

The objection period for other exemptions will not end until February 16.

Informed sources said yesterday that the lead-in time for the smoking ban will be up to eight weeks after the minister has made his announcement. That will mean that the ban will not become effective until the end of March or the beginning of April.

That leaves a situation where smokers will still be entitled to light up in bars and restaurants for the St Patrick's Day celebrations and may be able to continue smoking until about a week before Easter, which falls on April 11 this year.

The longer-than-expected lead-in time will allow employers time to prepare for the full implementation of the regulations.

When Mr Martin first announced the ban early in 2003, it was expected the ban would go through in the early days of January.

However, his plans received a setback in early November when the possibility of legal challenges arose in relation to applying the ban to some workplaces. These included guest rooms, hospices, mental homes, prisons and the Central Medical Council.

In the wake of the exemptions being granted, the first revised date suggested was late February or early March. But with the longer lead-in, it will now not be introduced until late March at the earliest.