Ms Fiona Gilligan:

The cookery aspect pulls together two areas of our brief, food safety and healthy eating. It is a critical area and there is an increasing skills deficit, particularly among the lower socioeconomic groups. The two things we have done recently were in television, because the lower socioeconomic groups watch television to a huge extent. The audience figures are huge. Celebrity chefs have been tried and tested, but we have found in the research that people are watching them for entertainment. In one programme we did, called "Take on the Takeaway", we challenged people to cook their normal takeaway - for example, a Chinese meal - at home. They did it with a chef helping them, but they had to do it at a cheaper price and to a quicker time so that it would be ready just as quickly. Obviously, that is what people want when they order a takeaway. Also, the taste would be as good as what they might get from the takeaway. In 80% of cases, people were delighted with what they found. There were eight programmes broadcast throughout the country and the viewership was very high. It was broadcast twice on RTE.

Building on that, last year we did a programme called "Angeline's Home Cooks" in conjunction with Tesco. Angeline Ball fronted the programme. Previously she could not cook - she was a singer but she could not cook well - but she married a Frenchman and ended up learning to cook quite well. It featured items such as Granny's stew, with Granny showing up to teach three contestants how to cook it. Again, this was not a celebrity type of meal. It was a simple, recipe-based piece. For example, when contestants were asked to sauté the onions, some of them did not know what that was. There were many technical things that people who cook regularly will know, but basics such as sautéing, simmering, grilling and so forth were explained. The contestants were also brought to the supermarket and shown the shelves and where to find the food. They were quite surprised that they did not have to go down some of the aisles that stocked the packaged items they were used to buying. Again, there was good viewership. TV3 broadcast it in conjunction with Tesco; the products could be found in Tesco.

On the education perspective, fortunately in Northern Ireland it is mandatory for all secondary school children to take cookery. We would love that to happen in the South. To fill that gap we have worked with St. Angela's College in rolling out a competition along the lines of "Take on the Takeaway". That has run for a number of years. We are reviewing it at present to see how we can alter it and, perhaps, get more people on board. There would have been more than 1,000 students involved each year, not just students doing home economics but others as well.