Ms Louise Reynolds:

In terms of teachers promoting and teaching nutrition in primary schools, for 15 years nutrition was an elective that primary school teachers could choose in St. Patrick's College in Drumcondra. It was delivered to lots of primary school teachers every year. I taught on that module for a number of years and it was always registered dietitians who taught the module. Unfortunately, that module has been stopped this year. In recent years DCU took over St. Patrick's College and it became part of DCU. From this year that elective is no longer available, which is disappointing.

When one does a bachelor degree in teacher education in St. Patrick's teacher training college in Drumcondra, in the final year there are a number of elective subjects. There are options that students can choose from. They include things like drama in the classroom and teaching Irish as an active language. They are things where one can delve into an area of interest for the students. The title of the module was nutrition in education. Every year it was oversubscribed because students on the course are predominantly female and there is a lot of personal interest in the subject. Teachers are also consumers. They get nutritional information from Instagram and magazines. Maybe they are not getting the correct nutritional information. About 60 students attended that elective every year and it was taught by registered dietitians. When I left, two other registered dietitians taught the elective.

The elective has been cut this year. They were told that for funding reasons the nutrition elective was no longer available. That was disappointing because at least the teachers coming out of it had good evidence-based nutrition training and were going on to teach children in primary schools. That is where a lot of the learning is coming from. We do not have the required number of dietitians to go into primary schools. There are some who do community work and access schools but it is very limited.