John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their statements. A year ago, I had heart surgery, so I am looking back on that now and the interventions that have taken place since. I am interested in some of the points made. Mr. Macey made the point that you are required to have your car NCTed. Why do my health insurers not require me to have my blood pressure checked and have an annual check-up? Not doing that is costing them a lot of money. That is something I will chase up. For those who do not have private insurance, there is public, PRSI and that kind of thing. It seems to be reasonable, given that we do it for cars. Is there some reason a health insurer cannot oblige a person to have a health check? I suppose the fear would be that insurers would stop covering a person but actually the whole reason is that cover would be better provided - that is the way I would see it.

One word I want to mention is "fear". You learn many lessons when you have an experience than many people have about their heart. When you talk to other men in particular, a look of fear comes over their faces. I have reduced my advice to one sentence, which is that the doctor is your friend. That fear, particularly when you are talking about blood pressure, is the fear of what you might find out. There is a piece of work to be done there. Most of the things you find out are very manageable and treatable. Science and medicine have developed great strategies to cope with them. There is a fear of the Armageddon diagnosis. Regarding the fear of going to the doctor, it is so counter-intuitive in one sense but it is where we could do a piece of work.

I will raise the timebound commitment from the Minister about a strategy. When do the witnesses think that the outreach and education around cardio-vascular issues ought to begin? I am always interested in geographical data. Is there any data available that indicates that cardio-vascular disease or blood pressure is location-rich? Have we any data on that? I have become very conscious of sugar content when I walk into a shop. If it is low in fat, you can be guaranteed that it is high in sugar and if it is low in sugar, you can be guaranteed that it is high in fat. The sugar piece is just getting worse. How parents cope with it even on the cereal aisle is beyond me. I have never seen so much chocolate in cereal offerings. It is just standardised. It is really crazy and the State is considered to be a nanny state if it gets too involved. What we do not talk about is the cost to you of us not getting involved and not trying to intervene is pretty astronomical.