Kerry: It is day one of the smoking ban in the workplace in Kilgarvan, Co Kerry, and there is giddy good humour as well as compliance by customers in Jackie Healy-Rae's bar in the heart of the village.
The ashtrays are everywhere, because as the publican Mr Danny Healy-Rae said on the eve of the ban, ashtrays were "needed for other things". The strong stench of herbal cigarettes gusts out through the door as the after-work customers pile in for a pint at around 5.30 p.m.
Mr Jim O'Carroll, a staunch smoker in fear of a €3,000 fine, is stoically pulling on one herbal cigarette after another at the counter of the small bar. The 20 pack of NTBs showing a green herbal leaf were given to him by a sympathetic person, he said. They have "no tobacco, no nicotine and tar is 3.4 mg," the packet states.
"How would you know a herbal cigarette from a real one?" customer Mr Mike Doyle asked, taking his 10 Benson and Hedges out of his pocket to look at them ruefully.
"I'm here an hour and I thought at this stage I'd be dead without a cigarette," Mr Doyle said. "It's disgusting that you can't smoke a cigarette. And I thought this was a free country."
After his hour without a cigarette, he looks healthier already, he is told. In fact, he is glowing with health, he is consoled.
In nearby Kenmare earlier, Mr Doyle claims to have seen people smoking in bars in the town.
Asked if she had told anyone to put out a cigarette that day, Ms Eileen Healy-Rae, wife of Mr Danny Healy-Rae, said people were old enough to judge for themselves what to do. She had enough to do to stop her own young fellows from starting to smoke, she added.