Dr. Cliodhna Foley-Nolan:

The potential for duplication is not a major issue for us.

An issue with which we are all grappling and which can be further improved upon is setting priorities as regards research. Everything is interesting but we cannot afford everything. A number of Government Departments and agencies fund food-related research, including the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and the Department of Health. The idea of Healthy Ireland is relevant in terms of pulling those potentially disparate groups together to prioritise areas of research. Even the balance between bench research, which is important in the long term, and things like behavioural research that give more immediate feedback is significant.

One area we have tackled that is a good example from the North-South perspective is dietary surveillance - getting frequent, ongoing and quite detailed information about what people are actually eating. We now have a group of all the relevant funders, as distinct from recipients of funding. They are the groups that are using and want to use public money as effectively as possible. We are agreeing a formula and have six meetings organised with the Departments North and South and the relevant funders, in which we will get together and work out a system avoiding duplication and gaps. That is one example, but there is plenty of scope for developing even further in other areas of research.

Sports drinks sponsorship is an issue involving not just fizzy drinks but all confectionery. Sometimes it is giving the message to children that they can walk from one side of a room to another and then get a bar that contains 300 or 400 calories - it does not make any sense. It is a funding issue for these groups, but very mixed messages are being given. From a policy perspective, we are involved in the special advisory group on obesity in the South and the steering group on obesity prevention in the North. We are influencing policy as much as we can. The alcohol issue is going to come first, but this is also a genuine issue.

I echo what Ms Gilligan was saying about listening to both families and children. Any initiative we have in schools is founded on what children and parents want, or what will target them and impact on them. The resources she was talking about have as major aspects homework and exercise. It might be a nursery rhyme or everybody might have to bring in an apple the next day or bring in an unusual fruit or vegetable. It is all games-oriented rather than what we could call didactic, boring old stuff. Off the top of my head, my recollection is that with Tastebuds - a primary school project which is also running in the North under the name Eat, Taste and Grow - our most recent evaluation shows that 70% of primary schools are taking it up, which is a very high rate.