A day after the second meeting of the Department of Health's Consultative Committee on Smoking, ITMAC director Mr Flor O'Mahony was able to write a memo to members detailing what had gone on.
ITMAC, according to Mr O'Mahony, is a trade association representing the three main Irish tobacco companies - Gallahers Dublin Ltd, PJ Carroll & Co and John Players & Sons Ltd.
The memo and others were part of a set which the US tobacco industry was forced to release when lawsuits were taken there. They were presented to the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children yesterday by Dr Fenton Howell, vice-president of the Irish Medical Organisation. He had found them on the Internet.
In the memo to ITMAC members, Mr O'Mahony outlined the issues before the committee meeting which were to be decided, and named some members and the positions they took when discussing a voluntary code for smoking in the workplace.
While it was possible, said Mr O'Mahony, that the recommendations which appeared to be emerging could be changed at the next meeting, "it seems to me that the line being taken so far by the committee is the best one we would hope for". This was particularly so, he said, "given the composition of the committee and the fact that it will be expected to give the Minister something new in its recommendations".
In conclusion, Mr O'Mahony, a former Labour Party senator and adviser to the late Mr Brendan Corish when he was minister for health, said if the recommendations were to go through along the lines indicated ITMAC's next task would be:
"to seek to influence the ways and extent to which the ICTU, IBEC and the Department promote the voluntary code; and to seek to influence the review of the booklet, Clean Air at Work.
In a memo sent to ITMAC members on May 30th, 1994, Mr O'Mahony revealed that he had met "the Department of Health official who is chairing the subcommittee of the Consultative Committee on Smoking in the Workplace".
He had also spoken "at some length" to the IBEC and ICTU representatives on the sub-committee "to restate our views to them".
"I feel I have had some success in arguing this case. I should say that the ICTU and, especially, the IBEC, representatives have been most helpful in this regard."
Ash, the anti-smoking lobby, said yesterday it was concerned that an industry "which manufactures and markets a product which kills 6,000 people in this country each year would have an input at this level to health policy in Ireland".
The organisation said it was also concerned that it appeared that both IBEC and ICTU were supportive of the tobacco industry.
Dr Howell also told the meeting that having smoking and no-smoking areas side by side was akin to having a urine-free area in a swimming pool.
He said tobacco industry suggestions for a voluntary approach to smoking regulations and smokefree zones were "nonsense". "It may work in some places but it is in exactly in those places that it does not work that workers need to be protected by legislation. Imagine the reaction if we said that there should be a voluntary code of practice with respect to the control of any indoor pollutant such as asbestos," he said.