Catherine Noone (Fine Gael)
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I apologise for having to go. I had to raise a Commencement matter in the Seanad. My question is for the Irish Heart Foundation. I have had much communication with Kathryn Reilly and I think she is an excellent employee. She does much work in this area. We all know marketing is a problem. I understand why we are discussing it as an issue. What will we do? It is like the discussion we had on cyberbullying. We have to come up with a report with recommendations. I feel like we are going in circles with this discussion with all of the groups that are stakeholders. The communications code is voluntary, as Mr. Macey has said, and is not that effective. We all know it is a problem. What practical steps will we take as policymakers to effect some change? I am part of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly. We recently did a report on obesity. We travelled to Holland. Normally, we would not, but I suggested that there is no point in Britain and Ireland talking to each other about this because we clearly do not have a clue about what we are doing, with the greatest respect to those making efforts. After that, I know that it will take much patience and hard work because we will not see results from this overnight. I had been working on this for seven or eight years before we even had a discussion like this in the House. I want to hear practical ideas about what policymakers can do.

There is much talk about mobile phones. The witnesses mentioned the brand in hand. Traditionally, I am all for nanny state policies and have a slight reputation for that. Will that have the effect that we hope it might if children do not have the brand in hand all day in school or other places? I do not know if a ban on phones is necessarily a good idea because children and marketing people will find ways around it. We need to focus on what will have an effect.

Ms Morrissey mentioned the traffic light system. Surely that should be put in on a wider scale than the witnesses' initiative, which I commend? I have said for years that there should be some such system - I am not married to any in particular - to make it easy for people to navigate labels and the fact that Actimel, for example, has a lot of sugar in it and parents think it is healthy. Will the witnesses address that traffic light system or a similar system?