Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 27 June 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Youth Affairs

Tackling Childhood Obesity: Discussion (Resumed)

9:30 am

Photo of Denise MitchellDenise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the witnesses for coming in today. I will start with safefood. The opening lines of the statement were strong and were true. We need strong and bold actions going forward. I will touch on a few of the key recommendations, in particular the one on the sugar tax. In a full year, revenue is expected to be in the region of €40 million. We would all agree that this would go along way to tackling obesity. Has the safefood had any engagement with the Department of Finance, considering all the evidence it has on the economic effects of obesity?

Another issue spoken about was the children's commercials code. It has yet to be reviewed and that is long overdue. Maybe I am wrong but I believe it could be 2020 before anything is developed and we all know that children are exposed to marketing, be it through television or other media outlets. On the issue of the voluntary advertising code, given safefood's bold opening statement, does it believe it is sufficient? When one considers that it is nearly six months since the publication of the code, it is not being monitored and there are no guidelines. Does safefood believe that is good enough? Does it believe we should be moving towards the statutory regulation of junk food marketing and advertising?

When safefood refers to its MediaWise programme, does it not think that we should not be placing more of an onus on these marketing companies and that we should be giving our children all the skills and the tools they need to navigate this?

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