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JAMES REILLY HAS revealed that politicians were lobbied on the issue of plain packaging on a scale never seen before in Irish politics.
The Children’s Minister described the lobbying of the tobacco industry as unprecedented and said that one legal letter from a cigarette firm was “especially aggressive”.
His comments came in a speech to the World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Abu Dhabi earlier today.
Ireland became only the second country in the world – after Australia- to pass legislation introducing plain packaging on cigarettes earlier this month. Despite expected legal challenges from Big Tobacco firms, the government has committed to having plain packs in the shops by May 2017.
In the speech, Reilly outlined the progress that has been made on implementing the EU Tobacco Directive, saying that MEPs had complained that the scale of lobbying on the issue was “unprecedented”.
“Leaked tobacco industry documents show that 161 lobbyists were hired and millions of euro was spent by one tobacco company alone,” he said.
On the Irish legislative battle, he said:
We were lobbied on a scale that Irish politics had never seen before but we had built a strong coalition that proved impenetrable to tobacco industry lobbying. Politicians from all parties and none joined forces to support this measure.
Speaking about a letter from JTI Ireland, which owns Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut, which threatened legal action unless the government withdrew its plans, Reilly said it was “especially aggressive”.
Not only did they attempt to tell a sovereign Government that we did not have the authority to enact plain packaging legislation, they attempted to tell us how far we could progress it through our Parliament and insisted that we provide them with a written undertaking – within a matter of days – not to progress it any further. They did not receive any such undertaking.
Reilly pointed out that the government’s plaining packaging bill passed both houses of the Oireachtas without any opposition, describing the clashes with the tobacco industry as “battles worth fighting”.
https://vine.co/v/O0vBBUmmnHn
Reilly said he hoped to see the UK and France follow with their own legislation in a bid tp drive down smoking rates throughout the world.
Quoting the Irish philosopher, Edmund Burke, he said: “‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing’ If we do nothing, the tobacco industry will delay and thwart public health legislation.”
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I don’t have much time for Reilly – but on this issue I think his “g’way and f*ck yourself” demeanour could yield positive results….
I hate James Reilly so much that I wish somebody else would take over the campaign from him, ANYBODY ELSE!
E-cigs are being branded as a sexy alternative. Kids have been using them as well
I’ve not seen one single kid using an ecig. Not one.
Lobbying politicians should only be allowed done publicly in front of their constituency . They didn’t get voted in by 10000 people to listen to one person with a business interest
Or in big tobacco’s case…an Army of foreign lawyers
Jeff the diseased lung anybody? #jeffwecan
Saw Jeff the diseased lung on john Oliver,very funny!
Be glad were not like the US, we complain about the whip etc and a lot of other aspects of our system but think of theirs. Congressmen and Senators often introduce legislation drafted by lobbyists without reading it, sometimes to such an extent that they forget to remove the header of the lobby group from the thing and it ends up in the bill.
Be jealous we aren’t Switzerland where citizens initiatives and direct democracy is in place.
But how many of those citizens regularly fund the tobacco companies to undermine their irregular votes?
You don’t undermine your vote by having an addiction
CRH Plc are the masters of corporate lobbying. In October 2010, a then senior CRH Plc executive, Mr. Ken Mc Knight told Peter, Barry and Tom Goode that it was CRH Plc policy to keep in contact with the Taoiseach’s Department and that CRH Plc had access to the Taoiseach regarding economic matters. Now that’s lobbying power for you.
If we sign up to TTIP this will be the norm .
If we sign that it means a foreign company could sue our government for loss of earnings due to a new law or policies that is a scary thought why are we signing it with this clause. Im not against the free trade agreement but a company been able to sue a government is wrong
Duck – They can attempt to sue. That doesn’t mean the have to be successful.
“The Euro area is not a Political Union YET”.
That is what Dragi said yesterday in Frankfurt. TTIP WILL CAUSE OUR MASTERS IN THE E.U. TO BE LOBBIED instead of us then. They do it now with trade agreements we sign up to because we are in the E.U. and have no say over our trade agreements anymore once we started to use the Euro.
The same with TTIP once Merkel signs up to that we will then have no say about anything TTIP does, we do not have a say about it now. We lost our sovereignty with using the Euro and soon our democracy.
We do not even have “Home Rule” for ourselves now, we are just like what we were like in the 19th century but worse off and people can’t see that.
Neal under TTIP, ANY COMPANY CAN SUE US IF OUR LEGISLATION GETS IN THE WAY OF THEIR PROFITS, that includes any environmental and employment legislation, Unions, groups and individuals.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/14/ttip-deal-british-sovereignty-cameron-ukip-treaty
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/criticism-grows-over-investor-protections-in-transatlantic-trade-deal-a-945107.html
Neal also…
http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2013/october/tradoc_151791.pdf
And if you can read it then… doubt it lol.
http://www.hs.fi/sunnuntai/a1386995885773
Just ask Canada if that is true Neal http://m.huffpost.com/ca/entry/6471460
@Duck , “WE” are not agreeing or signing up to it , , it will be our “employees ” , in government who might be tempted to do so., against our will.
If you’re naive enough to think cigarettes is the no1 issue they get lobbied on I have some ”AAA rated” ( ;) I swear!) securities from Goldman Sachs to sell you.
There is only ONE issue every western government is lobbied on in a serious manner and that’s economic issues (regulation and taxes – esp for banking). We might be less corrupt than the US because you’re not allowed to overtly PURCHASE a candidate here, but the lobbying still happens and if you think the real lobbying is recorded on any kind of official log then you might wanna pick up some online Nigerian lottery tickets with those securities.
Can we not just ban cigarettes altogether there is no point to them
They tried that with alcohol in a magical place called America once.
They tried to ban cigarettes with alcohol in America
It’s definitely time to discuss it and plan for it.
The same legal people represent the government and cig companies!
Holy God says Miley!
I would be surprised if the anti smoking lobbyists would gave equal access to the decision makers and politicians that the tobacco lobbyists have but sometimes doing what is right coincides with what is politically popular.
Plain packaging is just one of a series of measures designed gradually to reduce the acceptability of smoking. Progressively and over time these anti tobacco consumption measures will diminish the incidence of starting of smoking and that points to an erosion of the future market for tobacco products.
One aspect, which may not be obvious to everyone, is that lobbying can be subtle and fall outside the scope of what is recognisably lobbying. Observe the way in which the IP committee of the Law Society of Ireland, the Director General of the law Society of Ireland and the elected President of the aw Society of Ireland made a one sided and entirely weighted in favour of the IP and Branding rights of Tobacco companies to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Heath and gave the impression that the entire membership of the law Society was opposed to plain packaging.
Partners in larger law firms, partners in accountancy practices and in other professional services providers have easy and ongoing access to Ministers, senor civil servants, policy advisers and opinion forgers. This is a subtle process and frequently along the lines of “I would be very careful about that” or “I’m not confident that you won’t get into very hot water over that”. Reforms can be subverted. The resources of large law firms, leading Senior Counsel and other professionals can be cumulatively strong. A highly effective for of special pleading is “I honestly don’t think that FDI will welcome these measures”. That will often work.
The biggest challenge to regulating lobbying is defining the scope of lobbying. The most effective lobbying is almost invisible, subtle and pernicious.
Who really runs Ireland? Sadly, the voters have very little effective control on policy making and implementation. Vested interests are generally very powerful, just not obviously so.
Why am I reminded of an episode of South Park?
Once it was brown envelopes but now it is lobbying and lobbyists?
Now that this ttip is going through this will become the norm with foreign companies bringing us to court because we don’t do what they want.
the above “eh ?? ” was to find out if my previous post about my concerns about ttip were being blocked, it seems they were.
I said that I will NOT purchase hormone infected beef or chlorine washed poultry products from the us. I will continue to insist on quality foods produced to Irish standards .. What about the rest of you, ??.
Is THIS ok , Journal???.
eh ??
and , by the way , it can only become legal if our ,eh , “government ” agree to it.
and my main complaint is that these corporate parasites are seeking to be able to sue me for not buying enough of their sub-standard products.
have your say