Professor Lisa McNally

It's about 17%.

So maybe, you know, something like this could unlock further progress.

But, you know, not for me to tell Ireland what to do, of course.

Yeah, to some extent, we've had a bit more success over here reducing smoking.

I think one of the reasons for that is that we've been positive about supporting people to use vaping to quit.

But yeah, I mean, smoking rates are not falling as fast as we need them to.

They're not falling fast enough anywhere in the world, to be honest.

I think it gets down to a core group of smokers, doesn't it?

But also it's that recruitment of new smokers.

You know, the fact is that smoking is still around and young people are seeing it.

As you said, many people stop before they're 18, but

Hundreds of thousands of people start every year after the age of 18 and then they're addicted to it.

So we just need to keep driving these smoking rates down because not only do they ruin lives, they cost the country a fortune as well.

Yeah, I mean, to give you an example over here, you know, the UK has raked in a lot of tobacco taxes over the years.

At the moment, we get in about £8 billion a year from tobacco taxes.

But the costs of smoking to society are estimated to exceed 20 million.

So you've not just got costs to the health service, to social care, but also lost costs to the employment sector through absenteeism.

The costs of smoking far outweigh any amount of tax you can get in.

And in Ireland, you're looking at 5,000 deaths annually and nearly...

of £460 million a year just in hospital costs alone, plus the costs to wider society.