Smokers take to the streets as Martin wins clash of the ash

MARCH 29, 2004, was, by any measure, a momentous day for Irish society, when the country’s most radical social experiment forced hundreds of thousands of people to take to the street.

But they gathered in the open not to protest or to march on Leinster House but to meekly accept with surprisingly good humour in most cases the tough medicine meted out to them by Health Minister Micheál Martin.

And in doing so, we witnessed the landscape of Ireland changing forever within the space of 24 hours.