Dr. Aileen McGloin:

The Minister of State talked about the provision of food, particularly school meals. I will mention our food basket research, which we carry out every two years. That shows, as the Senator rightly said, that families on low income can spend up to 32% of their income every week trying to achieve a healthy food basket. This is a real challenge for people on a tight budget.

Another issue I will point out is that the areas of deprivation the Senator referred to also have a much poorer food environment. There have been a couple of pieces of research from Dublin in the past two years. One is from UCD and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, which showed there is not a single market in the most deprived areas of Dublin. There is something around the mapping and planning piece that we have to fix. The other piece is that Dublin City Council has done some comparisons of areas of high income versus areas of low income. Taking one example, that of Cherry Orchard and Ballsbridge, in Cherry Orchard, there are 53 takeaways and in Ballsbridge there are 16. These are areas of similar population size. In Ballsbridge, there are 139 restaurants and there are 63 in Cherry Orchard. Those are an indicator of availability of healthy food. Looking at supermarkets, there is not a difference in the number of supermarkets. However, in Ballsbridge, people can walk to the supermarket whereas in Cherry Orchard, they either have to get public transport or drive. Those are the kinds of differences between areas of low income and high income that we need to try to change through planning.

Ms Caldeira Fernandes da Silva and the Minister of State mentioned the capping of the number of takeaways in a certain area of deprivation. That was done in Newcastle in the UK in the past month. The Senator may have seen in the news that new takeaways are being banned close to schools where it is known there are high levels of overweight and obesity. This is not new. It is being done elsewhere and it could be replicated here.