Preventing harm from smoking 'absolutely' outweighs issues around civil liberties, one Fine Gael TD has said.
Cork North-Central TD Colm Burke wants to see the legal age for the sale of tobacco raised to 21.
He told Newstalk Breakfast statistics are going in the wrong direction.
"We made major inroads in reducing down the number of people who were smoking, and that now seems to be going in the opposite direction," he said.
"We've had a slight increase in the number of people smoking: we're gone up from 17% up to 18% in the last two to three years.
"I think we need to make further progress on this - the target was 2025 that we were to have the number of people smoking down to 5%.
"That now looks like we're not going to achieve it."
Majority support
Asked if preventing the harm outweighs issues around civil liberties, he said: "Absolutely."
"We're now gone into a situation where 16% of boys are smokers, 13.6% of girls.
"The study shows in the US when you introduced it, it would drop down from 13% to 7%".
Deputy Burke said a majority of people support such a move.
"There was a survey done by Ipsos, which shows that 73% of adults support it, and 69% of the age group between 15 and 24 support it.
"As we speak this morning, there are 1,000 people in hospital beds who are there directly as a result of being smokers.
"That's how serious the issue is".
'A health issue'
When it was put to him that people are considered adults from 18, he said: "This is about healthcare and long-term planning.
"If we stopped everyone smoking in the morning, it will still take us 25 years where we will still be dealing with it as a health issue," he added.
Last year, the Irish Heart Foundation said increasing the age of sale to 21 could see smoking rates drop by up to 34%.
The charity - which also wants the change to extend to e-cigarettes - said data showing an increase in teenage smoking strengthens the case for a tobacco ban for under-21s.
In 1995, the teen smoking rate in Ireland was 41% - which fell dramatically to 13.1% by 2015.
However by 2019, this percentage had increased back up to 14.4%.
