Ms Kate O'Flaherty:

I will. Like previous contributors, many of whom are close partners in our work in this area, I thank the Chairman and the committee for the opportunity to be here. I have circulated a very short paper and will address a couple of points in that. I am the head of health and well-being in the Department of Health. We lead the whole-of-Government and whole-of-society implementation of the Healthy Ireland framework, which a number of previous speakers have referred to. A critical part of that is cross-Government work and interdepartmental work. The committee has seen some evidence of that in the submission from our colleagues in the Department of Education and Skills, and I will address further examples, but it is a broader than that. It is about every sector, not just education, and includes local authorities, workplaces and the whole community in how we join the dots better to support individuals, families and communities to look after their own health and well-being better and to give them the tools and resources to be able to do so. Much of what we are talking about here today, as some colleagues have touched on, is a focus on schools, parents, children and young people. That is within the context of a wider community and society drive.

As well as Healthy Ireland, in our implementation of this, we have two national policies and plans which have been approved by Government in the past year. The national physical activity plan, which I will speak about in a moment, was approved by Government early last year. The obesity policy and action plan, A Healthy Weight for Ireland, will come later in the year. The committee has heard from our colleagues in the Department of Education and Skills and a key part of our work with our colleagues in the HSE is continuing work to align our work with the reform in education, particularly to support the new well-being curriculum. For example, our colleagues in the HSE would give their expertise and input into developing training programmes for teachers in co-operation with the Department of Education and Skills, and they would also provide resources to ensure that whatever is done in school is in line with national policy, best practice evidence and national guidelines.

We had the first meeting of our new oversight group for the obesity policy and implementation plan last week. The Departments of Education and Skills, Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Children and Youth Affairs, and Housing, Planning and Local Government, which all key Departments, as well as agencies such as safefood are involved. As people have said and Dr. Murrin articulated very clearly earlier, both the causes of and solutions for obesity are multifaceted, quite complex and interlinked. It is a matter of having action on all of those issues. To give some detail on that, we will take a population approach, with a focus on child obesity. It is important to acknowledge that when we developed the policy, it involved consultation with children and young people. It is important for us to include them in implementation. Healthy Lifestyles Have Your Say was supported through the Irish Primary Principals' Network and Comhairle na nÓg to hear from young people. Some things they mentioned had already been referred to, such as the lack of diversity in some schools or communities with regard to different sports or activities. For example, if a child is not interested in ball games, are dance or other activities available? We heard from children who were overweight or had issues with their diet and weight about the stigma, mental health issues and other issues that people have mentioned with regard to that.

People have referred to a number of more recent developments to tackle the broad issue and support the work that every family and school in the country is doing. There has been reference to the new sugar-sweetened drinks tax. That is about both obesity and dental deterioration and is very much focused on young people. There has been mention of marketing by food companies so, under the obesity policy, we are trying to work where we can in partnership with the food industry and we developed a code of practice for marketing foods, especially to young people. The Minister of State with responsibility for health promotion will launch that in the coming weeks. It is a step in the right direction with regard to our other work with industry on reformulations or reducing sugar, salt and fat and such in foods. Colleagues in safefood have referred to the new child obesity campaign that we will launch next week with the Minister for Health, all going well. With regard to stigma and how children feel, some language is now changing. For example, our policy is called A Healthy Weight for Ireland and our campaign centres on a healthy weight for children. We do not talk about obesity in children so much any more but ask how we ensure that every child in Ireland has a healthy weight. There has been reference to the new standards that we created. All food going into school meals, which receive the guts of €50 million of investment by the State into both DEIS schools and some non-DEIS schools, has to meet the new healthy eating guidelines in the food pyramid. That will be a very impactful measure as it is rolled out into schools from this year.

Earlier intervention and supporting parents was mentioned, and would be a focus of the campaign. Key work that we are now doing is to have the new healthy eating guidelines and food pyramid for the population of those aged five and up, whereas we are developing new healthy eating guidelines underpinned by evidence for one to five year olds. That will be helpful in the future to both parents and those in the early years setting to tell what is best practice for nutrition for children.

We have a separate plan for physical activity, because while being a pillar and very important for weight management, it is also about much more. It is for mental well-being and for the social, emotional and other development of children and young people. The obesity policy recognises that and we work with the two in tandem. Something that has been referred to is the active school flag. We have supported the Department of Education and Skills in rolling that out. A recent development in that regard has been the new Healthy Ireland fund that the Government has set up under our framework, with an additional €5 million this year and another €5 million, thankfully, allocated in budget 2018. We will put more than €200,000 into the active school flag initiative to promote it to schools, expand the number of primary schools using it, and develop a fit-for-purpose model for secondary school which will align with the new well-being curriculum.

I will finish by saying that there has been a lot of focus on children in schools. It is instructive that we launched our Healthy Ireland survey for 2017 this morning so some people may have had earlier figures from it on the numbers of people who are overweight or obese. As one gets older, one is more likely to be overweight. We had a focus in the survey this year on the 15 to 24 year old group who, as people have referred to, are soon going to be the parents of the future, even though they might not think that. We have highlighted concerns about levels of smoking, alcohol consumption and overweight people.

Some 30% of our 15 to 24 year olds are overweight.

We have ambitious policies and plans and a much-improved infrastructure for partnership working across Government and across society. There is an awful lot of work to do but there is a lot of good work under way. By continuing on that path, we will hopefully start to make some inroads in terms of the statistics on obesity.