CSNA Company Limited v Minister for Health

CSNA challenged the legality of a public health regulation through which the Irish Minister of Public Health augmented sale license fees for tobacco and nicotine inhaling products. CSNA brought the challenge in a representative capacity for its 1350 members, including retailers, newsagents, independent shops, and franchisees.

CSNA alleged that the newly augmented fees lacked an evidentiary basis and fell outside of the Minister’s powers as the fees exceeded the costs of operating the sale licensing system. The High Court dismissed all of CSNA’s claims and concluded that the CSNA lacked standing.

In reaching its conclusion the High Court also dismissed each of the CSNA’s claims on the merits, concluding, among other things, that:

The sale licensing fees need not be limited to recovering costs for operating the sale licensing system.
The Minister had broad discretion in determining an appropriate sale licensing fee.
The Minister may rationally set different fees for different products, in this case, for tobacco and inhalable nicotine.
The specific fee in question was based on evidence (a briefing document), which was “reasoned, and reasonable.”
The possibility that the licensing fee may not disincentivize the sale of tobacco products did not render the fees unlawful or irrational. Indeed, the High Court concluded it was “common sense” that” fees would be set at a level which reflected the harmful nature of the product, and would, if anything, be calculated to reduce tobacco consumption.”

CSNA Company Limited by Guarantee v. Minister for Health, Ireland and the Attorney General, [2025] IEHC 738, High Court (2025).

Ireland
Dec 18, 2025
High Court

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"The 2024 Regulations will achieve their straightforward purpose of imposing a licence fee on retailers of tobacco products, precisely as required by the 2023 Act. They may or may not have one of the effects contemplated by the Minister when making them, of disincentivising the sale of tobacco products. The possibility that the Regulations may not have this effect does not render them unlawful. Even if the Minister’s primary purpose was to achieve such disincentivisation, the evidence falls far short of establishing that the Regulations are, therefore, irrational as incapable of having the effect intended."

"It is inconceivable that the Oireachtas, in passing a Public Health Act, with the clear purpose of more strictly regulating the sale of tobacco products, did not have it within its contemplation that the 2023 Act’s purpose was to promote public health, and that the exercise of powers given under the Act would be pursued to that end. In passing the 2023 Act without expressly imposing any limit on the discretion afforded to the Minister when setting the appropriate fee for a licence to sell this harmful product, common sense suggests that those fees would be set at a level which reflected the harmful nature of the product, and would, if anything, be calculated to reduce tobacco consumption, rather than promote it, or even maintain it at its current levels."

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