John Power, Irish Hotels Federation
Thank for the invitation to come here today to share some of the experiences from an employer’s side of the introduction of the smoking ban in Ireland.
In Ireland, the Minister for Health made the date announcement on 31st January 2003 that the ban would come into law in all premises on 1st January 2004. About six weeks later during the first week in March, we held our annual conference and using a digi-voting system we put the question to our members: is the smoking ban in all public places a good thing, or a bad thing? Over 70% of our members said it was a good thing. That question and the result gave us a mandate from early on to look at it, to be positive, to get on the bandwagon, to get involved with the Minister, and to make it workable.
Looking back on our own campaign, I think the only mistake that was made was people saying, it will not affect business, and it did, and it does have an effect on business. However, business is recovering, but it did have an effect. And there is no question that it is worth it and it will be accepted, even by the more militant vintner organisations that resisted it from the first day it was ever mooted. The bar trade in Ireland has been going through a difficult period; the smoking ban; the random breath testing which we have now introduced on people driving; the major reduction in the volume of drinking, particularly in rural areas. CSO figures have shown that there actually has been a reduction in the number of people employed in the bar trade in Ireland, all driven by a change in lifestyle, including the introduction of the smoking ban.
From day one, or certainly within six weeks of the Minister announcing it we took a view that the legislation was coming; that it was the right thing to do, and we tried to influence our sister organisations, the two vintners associations to come along with us.
We had a very early discussion with the technology people, and for many years, we were told there were alternatives and that ventilation could improve it. We asked the simple question: does it eliminate the risks, the carcinogen risk in the air, environmental tobacco smoke? And they said it will reduce smoke in pubs. But we said does it eliminate it? And nobody could say it did. Once that answer came there was no point in arguing anymore – we simply had to embrace it. As an organisation we’re interested in the health and safety of our members and in delivering a pleasurable experience to our customers. Along the way, the one change that did occur was that the legislation was delayed by a couple of months, which I think was a very wise decision, because if it had been introduced in the middle of January, it would have been in the middle of winter. At least at the end of March, the weather was fine, the spring was there, people could go out and smoke outside and it didn’t become as big an issue and people had until the following November to acclimatise to going for their smoke outside.
Looking back we had some very good stories in Ireland arising from the legislation. As you will know liquor licensing in Ireland is fairly strict, and pubs have to close other than at the weekends perhaps, 11, half past 12 at weekends. But in the West of Ireland, we’ve a history of not being very strict in the enforcement of liquor licensing legislation, particularly if you go outside the city areas, and most people will tell you where you can get a pint, or a drink at two or three o'clock in the morning. It’s part of, I suppose, our culture, and the friendliness which we have. One particular case in the West of Ireland did occur where at half past one on a Sunday morning, a police patrol car was patrolling around, and looking at pubs generally, and sort of hoping they’d see nobody, but they had to act as they had seen people at half past one in the morning, outside a pub, smoking. The people had come out as they had no problem with breaking the liquor licensing legislation, but they weren’t going to break the anti-smoking ban. I think this example reflects how the Smokefree legislation caught the Irish imagination.
The other major benefit is that Ireland was the first country in the world to introduce a countrywide ban on smoking in the workplace. And it got enormous, international, positive publicity. Okay, England won the Rugby World Cup but this legislation got as much coverage! Incidentally, in Croke Park with 80,000 people, it’s a no smoking area, so in fact those people coming over to enjoy the hospitality of Dublin, will not be able to smoke in probably one of the largest, one of the finest stadiums in Europe.
So what has happened since Smokefree was introduced? The main area is communication. The real issue and the challenge facing us was to get the information out to the business people, to the hoteliers, to the bars, to the general public. We had very good positive discussions with the Office of Tobacco Control, regarding the design of signs. Once the message got out, the design of signs was pretty much within the remit of people who were conscious of their décor, or the status of their buildings. And once that message got out and we sent out various memos to our members so it became a non contentious issue. We did get the exemption for hotel bedrooms and in Ireland, about 26%/27% of the adult population smoke, so a guideline was given that you should at least have that number of bedrooms smokefree. In fact, in hotels, the number of smoke-free bedrooms is much more, in many cases it’s 70% to 75%. And in fact, some of the international chains are now switching to a total ban on smoking, even in hotel bedrooms. But the key message we still got across is that even where smoking is allowed, it doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility for the safety of your employees, and you have got to ensure that, even where smoking is allowed, the proper procedures are in place to minimise and to eliminate the risk to your employees.
Another lesson that we learnt was that when you went into a pub, maybe three or four or five weeks after the smoking ban was introduced, there was a totally different feeling. And one important lesson is for publicans: they’ve got to improve their ventilation, they’ve got to improve their sanitation, and they’ve got to improve all the ventilation in their premises, because the smell of smoke covered so many other unpleasant smells in the premises. They’ve got to clean their filters; the extracts from the rest rooms have got to be top class because otherwise they infiltrate the clean air that you will now get in the bars.
Otherwise, there were no real problems. Ireland which is a country that hasn’t had a great record of implementing liquor licensing legislation and things like that, embraced this, with enforcement or the compliance levels at 94%, 95%. And the cases that were taken were by people who were really being very difficult. You know, the Office of Tobacco Control, on day one, and the environmental health officers don’t want confrontation as it is in the interests of everybody, and the real police persons are not the inspectors but they are the customers. The real people who are policing this are the customers, who want this environment,
We developed fantastic tourism in Ireland by the way, we had so many people coming over to see how we did it, and why we did it, and they stayed for weekends and they stayed for weeks, and they went around the country. It was brilliant - now our next trick is to find the follow on to it and sure to win in the Rugby World Cup and have an UEFA final or something like that in Dublin. But we became the centre of attraction, and that’s something to be proud of. We overcame difficulties on the border with Northern Ireland. Initially there were fears that there would be some cross border movement on weddings and family functions, and there were a little of those in the early stages, but within sort of six months, people had forgotten about it. And people ask me, what impact has the smoking ban had in Ireland when I go to various European hotel association conferences, and I freely turn around and say, it’s a non issue. It’s there since 2004, it’s as though we had it for the last 50 years. People don’t even think about it and I think that is an attitude that you can build on, I think your customers will appreciate it and I think that you feel that your employees deserve it.
So, with that I think this sums up my comments. Thank you again for inviting me here. You’ll look back a year down the road and you’ll say what was all the fuss over? Thank you very much.
