why can't Hospitals enforce the 'no smoking' areas outside?

To be fair, outside holles street is a public footpath

Once they're outside, they're not breaking any laws.

People must have little to be worrying about.

It is what happens when extremely out of touch people make decisions.

Sam Coulter Smith took a sledgehammer to the smokers shelter in the Rotunda nearly 10 years ago.

Smokers still smoking though.

Yeah that's the one, it's encased in glass if I remember correctly.

I think all the women and children who have been beaten and abused by drunken louts of both sexes might disagree with you there , not to mention the high volume of road traffic accidents and road deaths caused by drunken drivers .

But no , as per your op , you're concerned with the people who are killing themselves and nobody else outside of hospitals , except for the smoking pregnant women of course and the smoking fathers-to-be .

It's going nowhere and a danger to themselves but they still do it . Why ? Because they are addicts same as an alcoholic or heroin or coke addict .

It's one of those things that you would hope education and removal of social acceptance for a bad habit would eventually eradicate , but it appears there will always be a certain amount of people who are addicted .

Maybe they need to include smoking as a registered addiction .

People can register with Quit.ie to get free counselling and NRT if they want .

Vaping is not a safe choice now either .

But at the end of the day it's their choice .

You can choose to walk on by and not get annoyed also . Just take a deep breath before you enter the cloud .

No matter how well intentioned you can't solve all the problems in the world , Andy.

God knows, we spent so long in pubs and clubs in the 80s and 90s in a fog of smoke it is probably contributing to all the cancers in those people who never smoked .

It was no great thing...even more difficult to give up for those that tried because temptation was everywhere .

I was never a smoker but did " blow away" an odd one just to be with my friends 😎

I'd say the majority of smokers hate smoking. At the beginning I liked it. And even later on there were certain times I liked it but it cost a fortune and was making me unwell. I can remember discussions with other smokers in the smoking shelters at work and most of us hated it. We kept doing it because we were addicted. And what we hated the most was that we had to smoke. Every hour we needed a cigarette. Dreading long train or plane journeys. It's pissing rain? That doesn't matter because we'll still go outside because we have to. The fear when you realise it's late but you don't have enough to last until the shops open. Being broke but somehow scraping enough money to buy some.

The addiction is definitely the worst part and you do hate that you can't make yourself stop.

I managed to give up twice with Champix. IT's a prescription drug, costs a fortune but it works. I started smoking again months and months later. usually when I was drunk. So I can't blame the champix for that.

BTW, vaping is pretty safe. I vape now. I did loads of research into it when I was trying to switch over. People say we don't know the long term effects but so far there's been nothing shown to be wrong. And we can't avoid stuff because we don't know what's going to happen in 50 years when there's zero indication that anything will.

And especially when we know 100% about the dangers of smoking. Smoking is really, really bad.

Someday I'll give up vaping. mainly because of the fact that i don't like being addicted. I don't want to be reliant on a drug. But for now I'm healthier, it's cheaper and it's far less disgusting than smoking.