The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, has said he has absolute confidence that the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, will fully support his controversial plan to ban smoking in pubs from the start of next year.
A day after Mr Ahern stressed that some details had yet to be finalised, Mr Martin said he did not see that "any big issue" was outstanding concerning the ban.
"We're going ahead in January. It'll be January 1st or a day or two afterwards. That's a minor matter," he said.
Plans to ban smoking in prisons and psychiatric hospitals were the only two outstanding areas of uncertainty, he said. "Just those two. I accept there are issues there that we need to engage with."
Mr Martin said he had been "surprised and disappointed" that the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, publicly expressed opposition to the plan. He said he would bring a regulation setting out the details of the ban to the Cabinet in October or November and that he was encouraged by the stance of the Taoiseach.
"From some time back the Taoiseach would be in favour of smoke-free environments. I think that's a personal position he has and, in fact, he has been particularly supportive of this measure."
But while Mr Martin said the Cabinet supported the initiative, he added that he would have been naive to have expected unanimous support from fellow Ministers.
"I didn't expect unanimity on the issue going into this," he said. "We don't all issue 15 statements supporting each other every second day of the week so I wouldn't expect that, to be frank about it."
The Minister made his comments after senior Government sources played down Mr Ahern's remarks on Sunday. They said the Taoiseach was referring to the detailed timing of the ban and not the principle of the ban per se. This centred on whether the ban would be imposed at midnight on January 1st or some time soon afterwards.
While Mr Martin believed that a majority of Fianna Fáil TDs favoured the measure, he said his "main challenge" was to convince anti-ban TDs and senators in the party to support him.
But the Tipperary TD, Mr Noel Davern, one of most vocal of those against the ban, said his campaign would continue. Mr Davern said that when weekly parliamentary meetings of the party resume later this month, he would table a motion calling for special smoking areas in pubs.
However, Mr Martin said he believed Mr Davern was motivated by a personal difficulty with the plan. "Some TDs have a genuine position on this - Martin Cullen would be in that league - there's no doubt that representations have been made to other TDs and that's natural."
Interviewed by The Irish Times, Mr Martin criticised the alliance of publicans and hoteliers who have campaigned against the plan.
He said their claims about the economic impact of the ban lacked credibility and said their arguments in favour of special smoking zones in pubs were disingenuous.
"I think it's a head-in-the-sand approach to the issue, similar to the stance that the tobacco industry itself took when it claimed that smoking didn't cause cancer when they knew it did," Mr Martin said. "I think we should stop pretending that it doesn't."
He added: "I think the industry have overplayed it. I think the Irish Hospitality Alliance's wild allegations about 65,000 jobs have not impressed people and are not credible." Mr Martin said that he was obliged to introduce an outright ban for health reasons.
"I'm looking at it as Minister for Health and Children who has an obligation . . . to do the right thing for the country and to do the right thing for future generations."
