Mr. Geoffrey Browne:

I will make a point on the earlier discussion about vending machines. Some of my colleagues stated these machines are an income stream in schools. I would extend that to beyond schools. Ironically, we also see them in swimming pools, gymnasiums and so on. I often think they are the most popular machine in some gyms. They are an income stream even outside schools. They certainly should not be in public pools. The first thing someone buys after swimming should not be a fizzy drink and bar of chocolate. We could look at those but I fully understand that they are income streams.

On schools and parents working together, this is already the case. Most schools, both at primary and post-primary level, have parents' associations in situ.On providing training about healthy eating and so on, the National Parents Council Post Primary would be delighted to act as a funnel or to organise such training for parents' associations across the country, many of which we represent. I should include the caveat that this would be subject to resources being made available by the relevant Departments.

To return to the thorny issue of weighing children, which was raised by the Acting Chairman, in this day and age children are intelligent, as are some adults, although maybe not myself. I do not see why we could not weigh children at home and feed that information into a secure online extranet. It is not exactly rocket science to weigh oneself and see what height one is. That would remove a certain amount of the stigma. Obviously, consultations would be required in cases where professional advice is needed, but if the purpose was purely to see the state of the nation, we could throw together a website which people could log in to and enter their vital statistics. Thinking outside of the box and holistically, there are ways of doing that. However, I would again advise caution in respect of schools carrying out this function. As I noted in my opening statement, we need to be mindful of stigmatising children. We need to advocate that this is about their well-being and health. From what I can remember of the relationships and sexuality education class - although I do not remember what it was called back then - I was cracking up down the back afterwards and asking what the boys thought of it. Children talk at school and we need to be mindful of that.