The Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children has sought advice from a team of US lawyers on how best to seek discovery of documents from tobacco companies showing how much they knew about the addictive nature of smoking in the mid-1980s.
The committee chairman, Fianna Fail TD Mr Batt O'Keeffe, said last night that he spoke at the weekend in New Orleans with the US lawyers who won a $246 billion settlement from US tobacco companies.
The committee is to seek the powers of compellability to force Irish tobacco companies to divulge what they knew about the dangers of smoking. If it emerges the industry was fully aware of the health risks involved in the mid-1980s the committee is expected to recommend that the State initiate a claim.
Mr O'Keeffe was part of a committee delegation at a conference on tobacco litigation in New Orleans. It met the lawyers on the fringes of the conference.
"We were looking for advice as to how we could best proceed with our efforts to get documentation from the tobacco industry as to what was known about the dangers of smoking here in the 1980s," he said. "We wanted guidance on the pitfalls legal people encountered in the US."
He said the committee has asked the Bar Council to submit a shortlist of senior counsel suitable to help the committee assess what documents it should seek from the tobacco industry here.