Mr. Tomás Ó Ruairc:

The Acting Chair raised an important point. The goal of any activities, actions or policies emerging from the deliberations of the committee, or of policy more broadly, in respect of data is to get sufficiently reliable data to ensure that policies are informed by evidence and will have the impact they are designed to have. It is clear from the presentations this morning that we certainly have sufficient data to know that we have a problem in Ireland. Ms Leydon referred to the voluminous research on social and physical health.

We have sufficient data to also know there is a possible risk of overstating the extent of the problem. The statistics I have received from Professor Donal O'Shea indicate 12% of group five socio-economic children are obese. I know 12% is 12% too many but 88% are not obese. There is certainly a risk of over-focusing on physical weight as the issue to the exclusion of all others. As Professor Jim Lucey stated in his research, mental health is both a contributor to and a consequence of excessive weight. There is almost a vicious circle aspect to it.

Before we start gathering additional data, we need to be quite clear as a society as to what we are trying to achieve. Schools have plenty of experience of professionals coming in from the outside, such as psychologists, speech therapists and dentists. This will be nothing new to them as such. In its document on promoting a healthy school, the HSE highlighted two key facets of successful intervention in this space, namely, collaboration and integration. Teachers want to collaborate with other professionals. Rather than crossing professional boundaries inappropriately, they need to ascertain what are their responsibilities and what are the needs and then to focus on that. That has to be the key element. We can get the data but we need to look at the data we have already and build on that in collaboration with each other.