The Minister for Health has indicated that she will seek Government approval later this month to introduce comprehensive legislation to regulate the use of sunbeds.
The legislation, entitled the Public Health (Sunbeds) Bill, will prohibit the use of sunbeds by anyone under 18 years of age, as well as outlawing the sale or hire of sunbeds to minors.
Sunbeds will be prohibited from being used in an unsupervised premises, and warning signs will have to be displayed on the machines themselves and in the centres where they are being used.
Enforcement provisions and penalties for non-compliance will be introduced under the new legislation. Exemptions to the ban, however, will be allowed for medical purposes.
“The measures I am propos-ing to introduce are very much in keeping with the Government’s broader cancer control agenda,” stated Minister Mary Harney.
She noted that the 2009 reclassification of sunbed use as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer placed sunbed use in the same category as environmental tobacco smoke and further highlighted the need for robust legislation in this area.
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