All hunky dory as smoke hut shut
The workplace smoking ban has spurred 80 of the 83 staff of Largo Foods in Ashbourne, County Meath, who were smokers up to last Friday, to try and kick the habit for good.
The company manufactures Perri and Hunky Dory crisps and employs 210 people, and had a smoking hut in its grounds for its 83 smoking staff.
Yesterday, however, it went up in smoke as all but three of the smokers put on their nicotine patches and signed up for a free week at a local gym, all incentives from their managing director Raymond Coyle who sympathised with the hard times facing them.
“This is the end of an era with the smoking hut gone, and anyone who wants to smoke will have to take their uniform off and go outside the gates now,” said a company spokeswoman.
The new law has become a watershed for the majority of the smokers, who are being given three weeks supply of nicotine patches by the company to help them kick the habit for good.
“We have also set up the Largo Food Smokers Quit Group and are going to do this as a team. For the first week we are also getting into a local gym free of charge and after that there will be a staff discount if we join it,” the spokeswoman added.
Further incentives to mark three, six and 12 months of being smoke-free are in the pipeline as the ban seems to have provided the catalyst for smokers who previously failed to give up the weed to try again.
