Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is great to have Dr. O'Malley here. I thank her for the important work she does. As the Chairman said, we have invited her in at the outset to highlight the seriousness of this problem. I have felt for a number of years that I have been bashing my head off a brick wall in raising this issue. It is starting to come into focus now. I am grateful to the Chairman for putting it on the committee's agenda. Dr. O'Malley has given us a list of organisations that should ideally attend the committee's hearings on this issue. Perhaps we have already invited many of them. I think the Irish College of General Practitioners needs to come before us. Surely the introduction of free GP care for those under the age of six gives us an opportunity to track the likelihood of obesity arising in a child. I understand that children are first weighed by GPs at the age of two. Dr. O'Malley will correct me if I am wrong. Does she think we need to face up to issues of societal embarrassment when we are dealing with families? There is a reluctance to ascribe fault. GPs should be able to tell parents that their children are becoming obese and that they need to do something about it. A more mature approach to children's health needs to be taken at that stage in order to prevent them from being brought to Dr. O'Malley at a later stage. Surely the fewer children she sees, the better.

As a member of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, I suggested that the assembly should prepare a report on this issue. There is a lot of useful stuff in the report, which was published recently. I am not sure whether my assistant sent it on. The assembly usually confines its activities to Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales. Representatives of those nations chat to one another about issues that affect them. I argued that there was no point in talking to one another in this case because we do not know what to do where childhood obesity is concerned. We decided instead to go to Amsterdam to examine the localised cross-departmental approach that has been adopted there. Obviously, there is some childhood obesity in the Netherlands. It is really interesting that local government has got involved in this issue in the Netherlands and I think we should look to mimic that approach. The main point I took from our meetings is that patience is the big thing we need. This problem did not develop overnight. It will take a long time to sort it out. Therefore, policymakers to be mindful of its gravity and complexity. I am tired of listening to colleagues in the Seanad and elsewhere saying that children with childhood obesity are just fat and if they eat less, they will not be fat. It is not that simple. I am grateful that there are psychologists here who can speak to that. I ask Dr. O'Malley to respond to the two points I have made.