The number of calls to the smoking ban compliance line more than halved last year but the proportion of complaints about breaches of the ban increased significantly.
The compliance line (1890 333100) was introduced by the Office of Tobacco Control (OTC) when the workplace smoking ban came into force in March 2004. Calls fall into two categories: people complaining that the ban is not been upheld in a workplace, and people seeking information about the ban.
Last year, 80 per cent of calls were complaints about breaches of the ban, compared with 60 per cent of calls in 2004. Complaints are immediately passed on to the relevant authorities for investigation.
An OTC spokesman said the increased proportion of complaints about breaches of the ban was not surprising as people were now familiar with the ban and did not need to seek information from the compliance line.
This familiarity with the ban also explained why fewer people were calling the compliance line.Some 3,121 people rang the compliance line between March and December 2004 while just 1,353 people contacted the number last year.
The spokesman could not say if most complaints about breaches of the ban involved pubs, but a review of the first year of the ban found that licensed premises had the lowest compliance, at 90 per cent.
After the first year of the ban, 94 per cent of workplaces were found to be obeying the law. The spokesman said all indications suggested that the level of compliance was still the same.
Full details of calls to the compliance line will be contained in the OTC's annual report which will be published in a few months.
Meanwhile, in the first fortnight of this year, the Irish Cancer Society's smoking helpline saw an 8 per cent increase in calls, compared with last year.
The National Smokers' Quitline (1850 201 203) received 1,362 calls in the first two weeks of this month. January is the most popular time to give up smoking, followed by National No-Smoking Day on Ash Wednesday.
However, the helpline saw a major drop in calls last year. Some 18,483 callers contacted the Quitline in 2004 compared with 10,368 last year.
Norma Cronin, the cancer society's tobacco control health promotion manager, said this was understandable as the Quitline saw a massive increase in callers around the introduction of the workplace smoking ban. Multi-media anti-smoking campaigns were also run at that time so this distorted the figures for the year, she said.
Some 36,000 smokers have called the Quitline since it was relaunched in November 2003.
