Mr. Chris Macey:

As far as we are concerned, there are four main drivers of childhood obesity according to the evidence. It is the increasing ubiquity of food, in that you can get it anywhere and at any time. The snack food industry was non-existent in the 1970s, when obesity was non-existent. Now it is a €390 billion global market. There is also the relative cheapness that we have talked about. From my reading of the evidence, the difference between us, the UK, the US and those other countries the Deputy was talking about is junk food marketing and the absolute bombardment of children, particularly online, with junk food marketing. The latter is something that we are not dealing with. We are still governed by a voluntary code. While we do not have the figures for Ireland, junk food marketing targeting children amounting to €15.1 billion in ads is hitting children in the online ecosystem in the UK every year. Again, what young people look at there and here is very similar. We did a survey recently in which 57% of children said they are influenced by junk food marketing ads online as the main influencer of what they eat, and 35% of them said that when they see junk food marketing online, they go and get some junk food. That is a huge area. In addition, sedentary lifestyles have been exacerbated by the pandemic. As far as we can work out at this stage, we have not got back to pre-pandemic levels of physical activity among kids.

As to whether there are examples of healthy food subsidies working, there are examples in South Africa and India. There is a lot of modelling around this and, certainly, what the research coming back is saying is that this is a sensible and serious approach. There is a lot more evidence on the impact of taxation rather than the impact of subsidies, because subsidies have not been tried as much. We have been accused of not being serious players by suggesting this over the years.