Dr. Elaine Mooney:

It is a small number and that is something we would like to be expanded. We are looking for practitioners on the ground. In other countries, home economists are to be found only in small numbers in the school setting. They work with families in the community. The ethos of our subject is to help families with their practical problems and to give them the skills to problem solve. That is what true home economics is about. In Ireland, we have it pigeon-holed into schools and few people refer to themselves as home economists. However, we refer to ourselves as home economists because we see it as much more than just teaching in a secondary school. We would like to move it out more into the community.

Over the coming weeks the committee will engage with other people from different agencies to examine different policy interventions which have taken place in other countries such as calorie posting on menus and front-of-pack labelling. While these measures are effective, they are only effective if people are taught how to use them. Students are taught in the home economics classroom how to read a label, what is the difference between calories in and calories out, and balancing the two. We often call on the food industry to re-formulate products. Home economics students are taught in the home to do recipe modification in order that they can look at a recipe and reduce the saturated fat in that or increase the fibre and reduce the salt. Those are skills that we want every student to have in the home as well as managing their meal planning and cooking age-appropriate meals. It is important to emphasise that these policy interventions in other countries have been effective because there have been adopted in the education system at the same time.