Hypocrisy is an insult to the people

Before embarking on his crusade to ban smoking in the workplace and public houses, Minister for Health Micheál Martin should have checked to make sure that the Government’s house was in order.

It is not and it should be a matter of monumental embarrassment that the Government, through the National Pension Reserve Fund, has almost €17 million invested in three tobacco companies.

It would also explain why a Government which is single-mindedly intent on stamping out smoking in public, was reticent about backing a group of smokers in a legal action against the same tobacco companies.

The hypocrisy goes beyond the smoking ban issue, which has given Mr Martin an opportunity to lecture the country on the evils of tobacco.

Elaborate and expensive campaigns have been aimed at getting people to stop smoking when all the time a Government agency had an income from the industry.

That income has been coming from not insignificant sums of taxpayers’ money invested in Philip Morris (€10,576,100), British American Tobacco (€3,589,961) and in Imperial Tobacco Group (€2,788,188).

The double standards exhibited by these investments are of breathtaking proportions, which may not be perceived by the public at large.

Graphically illustrated is the glaring fact that The Government is determined to impose a policy in relation to smoking on the public at large, which is diametrically opposed to what it actually does in practice.

It seems incredible that the Government did not clean up its act and divest itself of these invidious investments before Mr Martin was given free rein to deliver his proposed ban next January.

Equally, it is utterly unacceptable for official spokespeople to disavow any responsibility for putting public money into those companies and seek to transfer such onus to those in charge of the fund.

Having decided to introduce such a controversial measure as the smoking ban, which is resented by a considerable section of the population, it seems incredible that nobody initiated a simple exercise which would have revealed the link to the tobacco companies.

It is late in the course of the national debate on the ban, but even at this stage Taoiseach Bertie Ahern should display some semblance of leadership by announcing that the embarrassing investments will be abandoned.

It is totally unacceptable that the Government should officially prevent smoking in public buildings, while at the same time benefiting from such odious investments.

It is insulting to the integrity of people that such a duplicitous dichotomy should exist.

If the Government intends that people should take their anti-smoking policy seriously then it is sending out the completely wrong message.