Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group)
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I welcome the guests. This is a very important subject, which is really a ticking time bomb. It concerns health and life expectancy as well as complications down the road.

There are huge costs involved in dealing initially with the issue of people being overweight and obese and the complications from that down the road. I welcome the practical way put forward to halt the rise in the levels of obesity, to try to decrease the levels and to deal with the stigma associated with it. As previous speakers have said, this needs to be done on an holistic basis across the board. The approach needs to take account of lifestyle, healthy eating, fitness, outdoor activity, parental responsibility and education in schools. All these areas need to be rolled into one, as it were, in the approach to this problem. Do the witnesses consider that the campaign run by Road Safety Authority, which has been very successful, could be used as a template for the introduction of a campaign to deal with this subject?