Ms Orla Twomey:

Regarding the voluntary codes of practice launched in 2018, the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland, ASAI, had undertaken to Government in 2015 to look at developing high fat, sugar or salt rules. That was overtaken by the Government decision to set up the working group to look at voluntary codes of practice on a multi-stakeholder basis. We participated and supported that. The codes were launched in 2018. Since then, there has been no progress on their implementation. That progress required a monitoring body and guidance notes to be set up by the Department of Health. Since there is no progress, we have decided that we will bring the rules about marketing communication into the ASAI code. That process should be completed this month. We recognise that there are issues and concerns about the advertising of high fat, sugar or salt foods to children, especially online. Given that there were no specific rules for non-broadcast media, including online, our board felt that we should introduce those rules. We will do that.

There are concerns about how advertisers reach consumers online, through the use of tech tools, algorithms and artificial intelligence machine learning. The ASAI, with our European association, will look at how we can build on what is happening in other markets to use tools for widespread monitoring. We will use the same tools that the market uses to make sure that advertising is not directed where it should not be directed or that it does not have content that it should not contain. We will look at that. Do I have time to answer the question about influencers?