Dr. John Devlin:

Listening to the discussion shows the complexity of the issues. Deputy Byrne’s first point related to the inequality dimension of the issue. We are conscious of that. It is something we would like to discuss with the industry in terms of what we can do also. It does start in the home. I do not like to use the term an "obesegenic environment" but the committee will know what I mean in that everywhere we go we see food outlets and when one turns on the television there is a considerable amount of food advertising directed not at adults but at children, in particular those under the age of eight who cannot make cognitive decisions as to whether a food is good or bad for them. They will not look at the back of the pack and work out the GDA to see whether it is within the recommended daily calorific intake. One has to deal with all of those issues.

In terms of the tools and levers available to us, we must consider education and what more we can do. We have produced healthy eating guidelines but the fact that the committee did not know about them shows that perhaps there is more we can do even though we have produced tens of thousands of booklets. We would welcome the support of the committee in making them more available. It is true that we do not have a large social marketing campaign so we must be innovative in terms of how we get our message across. Meetings such as this one are helpful.

Deputy Dowds made a point about regulation. There is a hierarchy of approach and we like to try to start with education and awareness. Co-regulation might be a good approach but regulation must be at the top of the scale. A good example is caloric posting. The Minister indicated that we will start on a voluntary basis and try to rope in as many restaurants as we can. We will try to be practical in our approach. We will start with restaurants that have menus that run for more than 30 days. We are not talking about zooming in on the one restaurant that produces a single menu every night and the difficulty in that regard. We are trying to be practical but if we perceive the process is not working on a voluntary basis regulation is somewhere at the back of our minds. All of these levers are available to us. It is not just education and regulation. Pricing is important. I did not want to let the remark slide in case anyone felt that many countries in Europe are going away from the notion of a sugar tax or a fat tax. Many other countries are considering introducing it. The matter is very much on the EU agenda at the moment in terms of looking and learning from the experiences of other countries. This is a work in progress. The EU is very interested in what we are doing in this country about a health impact assessment. It is the first of its kind in the world. We will be able to learn a lot from it and we will also be able to export our learning not just to the European Union but also to the World Health Organization which is interested in seeing what happens.

The availability of foods and products must be taken into account as well. The point was made about whether we should segregate unhealthy foods, which would be challenging but it is one of many things that have to be considered in the same way as the approach we took to our alcohol policy. Senator Crown referred to people eating healthy food. It is all very fine eating a healthy chicken but a bottle of wine on top of it negates the overall effect in terms of what one is trying to achieve with calorie intake and a healthy diet.

A number of references were made to physical education. I will ask Dr. Woods to speak about some of the things happening in that regard.