Ms Kathryn Reilly:

I would like to make a point regarding campaigns and so on. It is something we talk about in terms of primary prevention. I know the committee will touch on this next year when it discusses the commercial determinants of health. We need to move away from that lazy language of lifestyle, where it is an individual response - it is down to the person and ill health is just down to what the person has done and an accumulation of his or her experience in life. We need to move to population-based responses, going back to the society in which we live and the things Mr. O'Donnell touched on in terms of planning and looking at things through a health lens. Many matters relating to ill health and cardiovascular disease lie outside the Department of Health. These include food marketing to children, as well as tobacco, vaping and alcohol, how these things are marketed and the environments in which we live. It is important to have sustained campaigns to remind people about healthy eating and so on, but we also need to look at population-based approaches and commercial, social and economic determinants of health. They are important.

I flag to the committee that the Healthy Ireland framework will expire in 2025. It is a cross-governmental and cross-departmental response looking at keeping Ireland healthy. It considers those population health responses. Given that it will expire in 2025, what will the Government do next? Is it getting ready for a new plan? Such a plan would need to consider the commercial, social and economic determinants of health and how we address that. It should not put it all on individual responsibility. That approach fails. The population-based approaches have been shown to work. They are more cost-effective and better at saving lives. This is addressed in the briefing paper we sent to the committee. That needs to be considered as well. It is how we will comprehensively tackle CVD into the future, particularly with ageing populations with more than one chronic illness.