Mr. Tony O'Brien:

The Chairman mentioned the newspaper reports. If I might use the phrase, I think they themselves made something of a meal of it. Each year the HSE spends approximately €32 million on food product expenditure. Some 73% of that represents fresh food product such as fresh meat, poultry, pork, bacon, fish, etc., fresh fruit, vegetables, dairy products and fresh bread. The standard sought from tenders is that they should reach at a minimum the An Bord Bia quality assurance programme or an equivalent quality assurance scheme. Some 20% of it represents ambient or dried products, which would include cereals, pasta, preserves, beverages such as tea and coffee, cooking products, flour, grains, etc., and 7% represents frozen food products supplementing fresh produce. Some 4% would include products such as ice cream, poultry and frozen vegetables, which also carry nutritional value. The remaining 3% refers to processed food, which would include such products as were the subject of that newspaper report - pizza, sausage rolls, burgers, etc. Therefore, approximately 3% of the total food purchased annually is in that category. The contract that was referenced relates to HSE west and nine counties, and the food there would not only be for patients but for staff and visitors.

In a rounded sense, while the HSE, in common with other health promoting entities, would seek to encourage all to minimise their individual consumption of processed foods for a variety of reasons, it still remains the case that there is a requirement to provide persons with a degree of choice and an ability to make decisions for themselves. To put it in context, while one might have expected that we were force-feeding burgers and sausage rolls to the entire country, the total procurement in HSE west would amount to no more than approximately 30 burgers a day or no more than approximately 18 frozen pizzas a day which, in the context of the numbers we feed, as I think the committee will agree, is very small.

The other point is that many, in a point in their lives, become long-term residents of a HSE facility and we would not wish to be placed in a position of being directed to say to them that they will never again be able to enjoy in an appropriately informed way some of the foods that have been part of their nutritional lives, be that the occasional undesirable battered sausage or battered cod fillet. We seek to provide choice. All resident inpatients have a choice menu. Where it is appropriate for their particular circumstances, dietary advice is given. We seek to promote choices that are healthy and balanced. It is not unreasonable for 3% of the food to be in that category.