E-cigarette company to create 140 jobs at €5.2m production site

A company involved in the production of e-cigarettes is to create almost 140 jobs at a facility in Connemara.

Rossport Pharmaceutical will make the formal announcement on Monday in Cornamona, Co Galway, where the company is to locate a €5.2m production site.

The 138 jobs in Cornamona are being grant-aided by Údarás na Gaeltachta — Cornamona is an Irish-speaking community in the Gaeltacht — and will support operations across Ireland and Europe, where Rossport is already a leading producer and distributor of e-liquids and nicotine-containing products.

E-liquids are used to produce vapour which is inhaled by smokers of e-cigarettes who are try-ing to quit the habit of smoking traditional tobacco cigarettes. Users of the product are said to be “vaping”, rather than smoking.

The battery-powered devices, which can be bought online and in some pubs, chemists, and newsagents, deliver a hit of addictive nicotine and emit water vapour to mimic the sense and appearance of smoking.

The vapour is considered less harmful than cigarette smoke and is free of some of its damaging substances, such as tar.

E-cigarettes are currently the subject of an ongoing review by the Department of Health into their “potential harm and potential benefits”.

Health Minister James Reilly has said he will ban the sale of e-cigarettes to under-18s, and a similar ban is to be introduced in Britain, where an estimated 1.3m people use e-cigarettes in an attempt to kick their addiction to tobacco.