Mr. Chris Macey:

In answer to that, I will take obesity as an example. We had no obesity problem in the 1970s. It is something that is new and really is a product of environmental factors and commercial determinants. We now have a situation where 85,000 of the children living on this island will die prematurely due to being overweight and obese. Looking at the evidence around what the key drivers of that are and what has changed since the 1970s, when it was not a problem, to now, there are four factors. There is the ubiquity and the relative cheapness of food. Food Safety Authority of Ireland research has showed that an unhealthy calorie is up to ten times cheaper than a healthy calorie.

There is excessive marketing of junk food, particularly to children, who cannot resist what are essentially some of the cleverest marketing brains in the world. Also, there are increasingly sedentary lifestyles. Unfortunately, this trend has been exacerbated by Covid. We have a manifesto on obesity and there are many committees and Department of Health groups that have considered what needs to be done, but there are three things that need to be done first. The first is a matter of political will. The Government has to say it is going to deal with this problem. Second, we should just stop the marketing at children of unhealthy food that poisons them. Third, we must take vested interests out of the debate. There are vested interests involved in the decision-making process around much of this. These are the things we need to do. It is not about services or waiting until people get sick; it is about stopping people from getting sick in the first place.

The same applies to tobacco and e-cigarettes. One in seven of all our deaths is tobacco related. There are 4,500 deaths per year in Ireland caused by tobacco. That is 12 deaths per day. If there were 12 deaths per day on the roads, something would be done about it. We took strong action during the Covid epidemic, but more people died from smoking during that epidemic than from Covid. They are still dying and we are not doing enough about it. We have lost our way in this area. It is really good that the Government has now started consultation on protecting children from e-cigarettes, including the flavoured kind. There has been a huge increase in vaping, which is linked to a higher rate of smoking. Increasing the legal age of the sale of tobacco to 21 has an effect. I hope we will get our mojo back on smoking because we really need to. Not enough is being done. Other jurisdictions, such as the UK, which is considering phasing out smoking entirely, are way ahead of us.