Independent TD and part-time publican Mr Jackie Healy-Rae has promised to go to jail rather than enforce the proposed smoking ban at his family's bar in Kilgarvan, Co Kerry.
"I would go to prison, no bother in the world. I'll have to because there is no way I'd turn long-standing friends against me," he told The Irish Times.
Expressing "100 per cent" support for those Kerry publicans threatening to defy the ban, the Kerry South TD said: "Publicans will have to go to court and defend themselves, and go to jail if needs be.
"You can't catch these people at the collar - these people who are a part of the family - and throw them out of your pub."
Mr Healy-Rae said he only worked "very, very rarely" in the bar, now run by his son, Danny, who last month replaced his father on Kerry County Council. If and when the ban comes in, however, "there's no way I'll be enforcing it, even if the Minister himself comes in".
He said there was "no comparison" between the clientele of a rural pub such as his and the "big city pubs" which the Minister had in mind.
"We have customers, about five or six customers around 11 or 12 o'clock in the morning; they will walk in and sit down in the little corner that they always sit down.
"They will get a half a whiskey. . . . and they'll sit down and light a cigarette and they'll smoke it away with their drink and maybe after an hour or two they'll talk and chat about what's happening around.
"You can't catch these people and throw them out on the road. The Minister has a way out of this if he puts a proper smoke-free section in pubs. If he makes a regulation that there's no smoking at the counter, that is fine. But he wants it 100 per cent, and he will fail."
