A chara, - It's nice to see the Government finally taking a step in the right direction, with the suggested ban on smoking during mealtimes in bars that serve food. However, I would like to pose a question: who exactly will enforce this? At present, smoking is banned on buses, but you rarely see the bus drivers enforcing this rule when people actually do smoke.
Does the Government really expect that staff will patrol diners' tables and make sure no one is hiding lit cigarettes under tables? It's up to the Government to spend more of the tobacco-tax money on educating people on the harmful effects of passive smoking - so much so that smokers themselves will stop lighting up in public, because of the risk of causing one more person to die from passive-smoking-related disease, or the disapproval of others around them.
Perhaps bars and restaurants could provide ventilated smoking rooms (not toilets or "areas" that impinge on non-smokers) that could be availed of by smokers during the course of social evenings. - Yours, etc.,
Lisa Daly, Bannaville, Rathmines, Dublin 6.