City’s illicit cigarette trade ‘costs local jobs’

A nationwide survey has found a rise in illicit cigarettes in Cork City in the past 12 months — a trend newsagents claim is costing jobs.

The survey of discarded cigarette packs on the streets and in bins in Cork found that 30.3% were non-domestic, meaning they had no Irish duty-paid stamp on them and were, therefore, illegal.

Cork was ranked seventh of 22 towns and cities surveyed across the country. The city was 2.4 points above the national average of 27.9%.

The current figure of 30.3% for Cork is a significant increase from the same survey 12 months ago when it was measured at 27.7%.

The survey was undertaken between April and June 2013 by MS Intelligence which specialises in brand and intellectual property protection.

The highest incidence of illegal cigarettes in 22 major population centres across the country was found in Drogheda (32.8%), Tallaght (32.8%) and Athlone (32.4%). The lowest was Clonmel (19.6%).

The overall figure for Dublin was 27.4% and for Limerick, 27.2%.

The national survey information was gathered through collecting a sample of 5,000 discarded packages from the streets and easy access bins across the country. From the sample, 440 of the discarded packs were collected in Cork City.

Joe Sweeney, president of the National Federation of Retail Newsagents (NFRN) in Ireland said: “The huge scale of the illegal cigarette trade in Cork has reached a level where it is destroying local jobs due to the drop in revenue from legal tobacco sales. Retail newsagents’ shops depend heavily on legal tobacco sales to also drive additional purchases. Illegal tobacco sales lead to a loss of footfall which hits other product sales.

“Despite some high-profile recent seizures, the Revenue is only scratching the surface of the illegal cigarette smuggling rackets.

Mr Sweeney urged the Government to launch a major crackdown on the illegal trade through making market and street selling of tobacco an offence with far stiffer penalties than are there at present. “This should be the Government’s priority for protecting retailers’ incomes and jobs, not introducing plain packaging of cigarettes,” Mr Sweeney added.

Alarmingly, the new Transcrime report by Professor Ernesto Savona released last week states that plain packaging may increase the demand further for illicit tobacco in Ireland.

“Cigarettes are already well out of sight in legitimate shops. Plain packaging is just a feel-good gimmick that will drive up the illegal trade further. This is the reason the British government abandoned plans for plain packaging earlier this month after an extensive public consultation process involving retailers and other concerned stakeholders.

“The least the Minister for Health James Reilly can do is afford Irish retailers the same level of engagement that was provided to English retailers,” Mr Sweeney said.