Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I indicated earlier. I thank the witnesses for coming before us today and telling the stories because that is what makes it feel real. I have lived it myself so I know what this is about. It is not just about having bad parents. I had great parents. Sometimes it gets to a point where it is a case of this being an issue. As I mentioned in the previous session, we do not want to give them a complex. I know the witnesses were probably here for the previous session so I do not want to repeat that. It is devastating to hear those stories but it is very helpful to get the human side of it, which is so real.

The issue of environmental planning is very interesting. I mentioned the report we did on the Netherlands which has taken a very cross-departmental and local approach. I would be very willing to share the report with the witnesses. With many of these reports, I feel that we spend a lot of time producing them and they end up on a shelf and we do not know if anything is ever going to happen. There is some very interesting stuff in that report about how the Netherlands approaches it at local level. Its levels have not been as bad as our levels and are reducing. As I said, it takes a lot of time and that is the frustrating thing about this.

Coming at it from a different angle, we hear a lot of talk about fiscal space. I am not sure I know exactly what economists talk about when they talk about fiscal space but I think there will be an awful lot more fiscal space if we sort this issue out. It is so short-sighted of us as policymakers not to see that obesity will cause so many expensive health problems in the future. If it is not obesity, it is cancer. It is endless. I do not know about the statistics and the witnesses would be much more qualified to say this than me. That said, what percentage of people are presenting in hospitals due to alcohol, which contains a huge amount of sugar, or obesity? The number is huge. It must take up most of our hospitals' time at this stage.