An assembly member has said that some Northern Ireland councils must drop their "softly, softly" approach to smoking in public places.
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), Simon Hamilton, said that since smoke-free legislation was introduced on April 30 last year, there had been "widely different approaches" to enforcement by district councils.
Statistics released by the health minister, Michael McGimpsey, show that while Castlereagh Borough Council detected the most incidents of smoking in public places with 185 cases up to 31 March 2008, Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council had none. It was also revealed that prosecutions have been brought against two people for smoking in a smoke-free place in Northern Ireland, despite figures which indicate that smoking in a smoke-free place had been detected in 1,039 of 36,240 premises inspected.
During the same period, 350 written warnings and 34 fixed penalty notices were issued. Mr Hamilton commented, "The figures, revealed to me by the health minister, would suggest that even at this early stage, there are widely different approaches to the enforcement of the smoking ban across Northern Ireland. I simply cannot believe that in one area, there were no breaches of the ban at all in the last year."
Mr Hamilton said the law must be implemented and that, "Whenever the smoking ban was introduced, it was almost universally welcomed, even by many smokers, as a good piece of legislation. As experience shows us, it isn't good enough to have a sensible law if it isn't implemented robustly."
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