Since the inception of the smoking ban in Ireland, there has been a fair amount of public controversy in terms of its potential effects on the Irish economy, the healthcare system, tourism, and pub culture. At the level of public discourse, the ban has raised a variety of interesting issues and polarisations. These include debates on the rights of policy-makers versus individual freedoms; and on the potential economic effects of the resultant decline in alcohol sales and the impact upon tourism, versus the concerns of the public and of health officials regarding the effects of second-hand smoke. These debates illustrate how the various interest groups involved have, at moments, coincident, and at other moments divergent interests and agendas. However, the biggest political dichotomy has been between the two groups with the most power: the government on the one hand and, on the other, the capitalist class represented by the (multi)national alcohol and tobacco industries, and the petit-bourgeois class represented by publicans. While many reacted with surprise at Ireland's becoming the first country in the world to implement a nation-wide blanket ban on smoking, because of the association of Ireland with pub culture, and therefore with smoking, there appears to have been a high rate of compliance with the anti-smoking law. This has led Minister for Health Micheal Martin to claim that the ban has been a success. Martin has had the support of the major trade unions for the ban, since it protects the rights of employees, and he was honoured by the World Health Organisation for his role in facilitating the ban. Evidence shows that people who work in pubs in Ireland are particularly at risk from the harmful effects of ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke), since recorded rates of cotinine (a by-product of nicotine) measured were high. Given the high rate of smoking in Ireland--30 per cent of the population smokes--and the centrality of pub culture to Irish social life, it is clear that ETS presents a particular risk to pub employees and other workers in the hospitality industry. However, some have perceived this as a ploy to deflect attention from the crisis state of the Irish healthcare system, and as an attempt to deflect state responsibility for Irish healthcare by locating health as an individual, rather than a collective or state responsibility (Unison, 2004). Martin Cullin TD, the environment minister, questioned whether this ban was 'following the political correctness of America' (Irish Health, 2003), which raises questions both with regard to the ban as a symptom of the perceived 'Americanisation' of Irish culture--an issue of great debate in Ireland--and also with regard to whether this move is a 'smokescreen' for the fact that the Irish healthcare system is more likely to go in the direction of the neoliberal American model than that of more 'social democratic' models in Europe. The ban itself could potentially have positive effects on the infrastructure of public health. However, the ideological premise that health is an individual rather than a societal responsibility illustrates the extent to which the Celtic Tiger 'boom' has not been accompanied by a strengthening of Ireland's infrastructure. This displacement of responsibility for public health onto the individual glosses over the extent to which the Irish state has failed to enforce legislation curtailing harmful pollution from industrial agriculture and industrial development in general. It also glosses over the extent to which the dismal state of Irish public transport is directly related to rising rates of fuel emissions in Ireland, and the state's refusal to impose environmental limits on industry and to redistribute corporate wealth towards public services. Despite the fact that the ban locates health as the responsibility of the private citizen, the general public was not consulted in the debates leading up to the ban. Rather, the government and health officials led these debates alongside publicans, token independent politicians and corporate tobacco firms. …