Bugging of anti-smoking meeting queried by TD

The possibility that a Department of Health committee advising the Government on antismoking regulations was bugged has been raised at the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children.

Mr Alan Shatter, a Fine Gael TD, told the meeting it was "outrageous and scandalous" that the deliberations of a private committee, set up to advise the Minister for Health, would be known by the tobacco industry "within 24 hours of it taking place" and the subject of a "verbatim report to every member of the Irish tobacco industry".

"Is it suggested the meeting was bugged or recorded in some way?" Mr Shatter asked Mr Chris Fitzgerald, the Department of Health official who had chaired the committee.

Mr Fitzgerald agreed it was outrageous but said he did not know how it had been leaked, only that it was certainly not done by anyone from the Department of Health.

"I'm not suggesting that meeting was bugged, but, well, I don't know. The meeting took place in Hawkins House [Department of Health]," said Mr Fitzgerald, a principal officer in the Department's Health promotion unit.

Mr Fitzgerald was asked to appear before the committee following evidence given at a previous meeting claiming the Irish tobacco industry secretly manipulated and misled the group advising the Minister on a code of practice for smoking in the workplace.

The consultative group was set up by the then minister for health, Mr Brendan Howlin, in 1993. It had representatives from the Department of Health, IBEC, ICTU, the Irish Cancer Society, ASH Ireland and others.

Members of the group, appointed by the minister, were not told that while they were having discussions Mr Fitzgerald had met Mr Flor O'Mahony, director of ITMAC, a trade association for the three main Irish tobacco companies.

Mr Fitzgerald said he met Mr Flor O'Mahony at his request. "I want to stress that in no sense was this a secret or indeed unusual occurrence. For good operational reasons it has long been the practice in the Department to meet, from time to time, with representatives of the tobacco industry . . . What is important to stress is that these meetings were never to seek their input into policy formulation but rather to address the implementation of policy decisions already taken." Asked about the decision to introduce a voluntary code rather than legislation to cover smoking in the workplace, Mr Fitzgerald said that decision had been taken long before he met Mr O'Mahony. However, he said that "with the benefit of hindsight lessons were learned and I do not propose to put myself in that position in future".