Professor Donal O'Shea:

If I can start to answer that impossible question, behind anything we do we must accumulate the evidence to say it works. We must look to the strengths of the country, which are our size and our ability to do things. Sitting around the obesity table, as it were, we will often use the smoking ban as a really good example. It was vehemently opposed by the industry just as seat belts in cars were opposed by the motor industry, but when the evidence emerged that seat belts work, it was a good thing. Not smoking in a pub works. It is a good thing. Making our children healthier is much more complex but the forces against which we are working are similar. They are industry forces.

Professor Kelleher and I sat on the obesity task force in 2005. It was dead within a year due to lack of funding. A Healthy Weight for Ireland is the next iteration of that 11 years later. If cycles of policy fail, it takes another ten years to come around before we get another chance. This is our chance for the next ten years to begin to make a difference over a timeframe that in reality, is a 30, 40 or 50 year timeframe. That is difficult for Governments that are elected every four years. In respect of the Healthy Ireland framework, backing this framework and making obesity and childhood obesity a central plank to address childhood obesity, we need to address homelessness, social justice, drugs and alcohol.

All these will have to be sucked into that complex solution. The figure of stabilising childhood obesity disguises continued upwards movement in the less well-off and disadvantaged areas while it slides downwards in the better-off, better educated areas. We are continuing to separate the population.

The obesity policy and action plan has an implementation group which is multisectoral and multidepartmental. The key ones involved are the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine, the Department of Health, along with State agencies.