Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I noted down some broad subject headings during today's discussions. Participation, drop-off, education, control and planning are the themes I am taking from this discussion. Participation refers to physical activity, while drop-off refers to the steep decline in activity in secondary school. Education and awareness refer not only to children but parents in particular. By control, I mean State control. In virtually every contribution she makes, Senator Noone refers to the nanny state. I am all for the nanny state because without it, we would not have rules on seat belts, cycle helmets, smoking, the sale of alcohol sale to certain age groups and so forth. I have no doubt people will continue to rail against these measures. The mere mention of labelling food or alcohol as carcinogenic leads to newspaper articles complaining that such labelling is an example of excessive control, which is nonsense. We all have a job to do, namely, to make life better for all citizens and if that means curtailing an element of freedom, so bloody what. That is what we have been elected to do.

The evidence provided at our two sessions makes clear that the question is not what should be done with the sugar tax but what we should do next. Should we address fatty foods, for example? Professor O'Shea stated we should wait for a certain period to see what has been the effect of the sugar tax. While I fully agree with him, we should also plan our next step, which means discussing issues such as saturated fats, salts, sugars and other products that are added to foods and marketed. These types of goods are the first items we see in the vast majority of retail premises. Only one large retailer places fruit and vegetables at the entrance to its stores. It is a pleasant experience to see the colours of fruit and vegetables. However, this practice has started to ebb since the retailer was acquired by another company. On entering my local store, I used to see the beautiful, bright colours of fresh fruit and vegetables, primarily from North County Dublin, which produces approximately 80% of horticultural produce in the State. This is starting to change, however, with prepacked goods now placed alongside the fruit and vegetables. This is a terrible shame. Perhaps the previous owner exercised an element of corporate responsibility.

We need to start bringing planning and control into this conversation. If, as Professor O'Shea states, we are planning for 40 or 50 years ahead in terms of impact and we only get to do so every ten years, unless we act now, the knock-on effect of the work of this committee and the Joint Committee on Health could last for two or three decades. That is a stark message.

I read all the submissions before the meeting. Even as a parent of two small boys, both of whom are relatively healthy, I think about what I place in my shopping basket. I buy smoothies, which are 100% fruit, but I may need to make some decisions on the issue of treats.

I was a councillor for seven years before my election to the Dáil in 2011. During that time, I was involved in a couple of development plans and local area plans. The development plans were fairly standard and the local area plans included planning for infrastructure in a certain zone, perhaps a field or whatever. We heard about porous pedestrian routes. The local area plans in which I was involved has very few such routes. I am from an urban environment. A development zone on the outskirts of town will have walking routes if it is primarily residential. The norm, however, is for older communities to resist access for new communities. They may not oppose entry to the community but they do not want others to be able to pass through because they do not want teenagers coming into their area as they perceive it may result in anti-social behaviour. This presents a serious problem in terms of healthy lifestyles because parents will not allow their children to cycle if they are blocked from accessing a route. We have to learn from that. I mean no disrespect to local authority members but we cannot rely on local authorities taking a uniform approach. This means a national approach is required and this should be done through primary legislation.

We have already seen the effect of the sugar tax, even thought it has not yet been implemented. Senator Noone referred to saturated fats and Professor O'Shea referred to food labelling. While food labelling is important, perhaps the print on labels must be larger. We should discuss what effect a 50% increase in the size of the lettering used to identify the sugar content on packaging would have. Given the positive impact of previous changes in areas such as smoking and drinking alcohol, perhaps we should start making changes in the area of food. I ask the witnesses to make some general observations.