Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I completely agree. The point I was making was that there is a significant gap between the levels of obesity in affluent areas compared with non-affluent ones and I would imagine it comes down to the issue of the price point of the basket. Does the Irish Heart Foundation have a view on why we are losing this battle? Mr. Macey made clear in his opening statement that we are losing the battle. We have seen all the healthy promotion and the strategies that exist. There has been a campaign on RTÉ encouraging people to get out and walk and we saw during the pandemic that more and more people were doing that, yet we are where we are, which is not a good place. Graphs in the report of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare showing the prevalence of sweet and savoury snack consumption throughout western Europe indicate that Ireland is the highest among all those surveyed. Our figures are about four times those for Italy, Hungary, Portugal, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia. A range of countries have about one quarter of the intake of sweet and savoury snack consumption of Ireland. I admit that as I say this, I am thinking these are all the kinds of foods and drinks I consume and I probably need to go home and talk to my children about this. Nevertheless, why are we such an outlier? I acknowledge Britain's figures are close to ours but in a lot of cases, we are way above the European average in terms of our habits and our consumption of sweet and savoury snacks and ultra-processed foods.

As we increase taxation on the foods we do not want people to eat, such as ultra-processed foods, is there scope for an incentive? Mr. Macey talked about subsidising fruit and so on. How can we correct that balance? There would have to be a very high tax if we did not get the industry to change. Getting the industry to look at how it manufactures these foods would be the ultimate benefit, but if we do not get that across the board, we would have to try to bring healthier food within the price range of these families. Obviously, there would be a massive benefit for those individuals and families but also for our healthcare system and the economy, given this comes at a cost.

I fully agree with Mr. Macey regarding hypothecation. While that does not happen in Irish tax law, there is a strong argument that any tax that comes from this should be used to support families who may feel under pressure.

Finally, is there any international experience of all this? Has it happened in other areas, and if so, has it been successful?