A packet of 20 cigarettes will cost €20.15 following a €1 increase in the budget, bringing the tax take to €16.03 or almost 80 per cent of the retail price.
Ireland continues to have the most expensive cigarettes in Europe and now has the second highest cigarette prices in the world behind Australia, where a 20-pack costs €21.02.
The €1 increase was accepted in the Dáil on Tuesday night by 110 votes to 48.
The pro-rata increase in the price of a typical pouch of roll-your-own tobacco is €1.39, bringing the retail cost to €29.72.
RM Block
Introducing the tax, Minister for Further and Higher Education James Lawless said the increase on tobacco products would yield approximately €63.1 million in a full year, and €5.1 million for the remainder of 2026.
He claimed the State’s policy to cut smoking rates “is working, according to the evidence”. In 2007, 29 per cent of people were daily smokers. “By contrast, in 2025 that figure is reduced to 17 per cent,” he said.
But Labour TD Duncan Smith described the Government’s policy as an “abject failure” as he called on the Government “to be honest”.
The Tobacco-Free Ireland strategy launched in 2013, when smoking rates were at 22 per cent, set a target of a 5 per cent smoking rate by 2025 but “they’re at 17 per cent”, Smith said.
Smith added the price increase had “become a substitute for what should be a robust public health policy, because there are 100 deaths a week, a thousand hospitalisations a week due to smoking”.
The Dublin Fingal East TD added that cigarettes are now €1 each but the figure might as well be €10. “If you’re not backing up the taxation side with a robust public health approach, you’re going to continue to fail.
“This Government has to be honest about their failure” and acknowledge that “we’re miles away from where we need to be”, Smith said.
He said successive governments “abandoned the robust approach in favour of this old reliable” of tax increase, which is not making a difference.
It is “regressive, not to mention the fact that almost a billion euro in revenue is being lost to the black market”.
Independent TD Danny Healy-Rae said if people smoked five packs a week, it would cost them more than €100.
He said he smoked a cigarette once. “I didn’t like it and I never smoked after that” but he said people tell him “it’s the only comfort we have”.
The Kerry TD did not think it would affect smoker behaviour but it would mean “they’ll endure more hardship” to keep smoking, particularly those on low incomes.
Sinn Féin Cork North-Central TD Thomas Gould said there was a time when a price increase “had an impact” but, calling on the Government “to be honest on where we are now”, he said “this strategy has diminishing returns”.
Just pushing prices up as a strategy “is not enough” and education was needed. He pointed to reports that almost €1.1 billion of unregulated illicit cigarettes were consumed in Ireland last year at a cost of more than €800 million to the Revenue Commissioners.
Independent Paul Gogarty said the campaign to reduce tobacco usage had not worked as people hoped it would. Now there is also vaping and “synthetic chemicals out there” causing psychosis. This “new stuff needs to be stopped.”
He said “the revenue from excise duty on cigarettes is half of the cost to our healthcare system from people who have fallen ill because of tobacco products”.
Gogarty said “even allowing for the black-market risk”, there was scope “for it to be increased further”.
The Dublin Mid-West TD said “cigarette-butt tossers get away with murder. It’s a €250 fine but trying to actually get that fine out of them is quite difficult because of the burden of proof”. He said trying to get them to court was equally difficult because “you’re not allowed to use DNA evidence”.
