Government reeks of hypocrisy

It is completely untenable for the Government to introduce the ban on smoking in the workplace while continuing to benefit from considerable and lucrative shareholdings in a number of tobacco companies.

The Government, through the National Pensions Reserve Fund (NPRF), owns 17 million worth of shares in Phillip Morris, British American Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco. Between them, they manufacture and market some of the most popular cigarette brands.

It is hypocrisy of the highest order to spend taxpayers’ money on anti-smoking campaigns, while at the same time investing millions of public money in tobacco companies.

Approximately, 7,500 people in this country die from smoking every year. The cost of treating tobacco-related illnesses is a considerable factor in the health service budget. The perverse logic trotted out by ministers is that the NPRF is an independent agency whose remit is to make the best commercial investments, irrespective of any ethical considerations. It, in turn, maintains it merely hires fund managers to invest in baskets of shares.

That is simply not acceptable and the Government cannot blithely abrogate its responsibility by washing its hands of decisions made by an agency it established.

The NPRF is funded and answerable to Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy, and therefore to the Cabinet. Its mandate is grounded in legislation which, apparently, allows it operate in a fashion entirely indifferent to public policy.

That being the case, its mandate should be reviewed because it is intolerable that it should so blatantly contradict an official anti-smoking policy. It is ludicrous for Health Minister Mícheál Martin to introduce the looming smoking ban while the Government happily reaps the benefits from investments in the industry, benefits which have increased by about 40% since the shares were acquired.

Previously, with regard to the same issue, Mr Martin expressed his dissatisfaction about the purchase of tobacco company shares and indicated he would inform the fund to that effect. Obviously, his intervention has had no effect, and it has to be a continuing source of acute embarrassment to a man in his position to see his sensible anti-smoking policy undermined by the Government profiting from the very product he seeks to curtail.

Essentially, the public is receiving a very confused message and the perception has to be that the Government is not quite so dedicated to its own anti-smoking policy. It is ridiculous to be spending billions of euro on healthcare, while simultaneously investing public money in an industry which is undermining public health.