Dr. Aileen McGloin:

On the marketing side, safefood has for many years been very involved in the area of reducing marketing of unhealthy food to children. I am almost ten years in safefood and have been involved in that area a long time. We sat on the committee where the BAI introduced the food-profiling model in the last iteration of the children's code, and that is hugely welcomed. Now we have a way to assess foods against a model. It also introduced the one in four rule for the advertising of unhealthy foods. It is no more than one in four in any block of advertising. That is positive. At the time, the public health bodies would have lobbied for the 9 p.m. but we did not get it. In the next iteration, we will be lobbying for the same piece. While there was huge progress in that iteration, we will be looking for further progress in the next one.

To echo what Dr. Foley-Nolan said regarding the voluntary model, we sat on the working group with the Department of Health. We would have liked to see the code go further but we are happy that we have any kind of code to address the non-broadcast area. It is a very positive step in the right direction but it does not go far enough. We see it as a start. There will be another iteration. We would love to see it monitored and all those structures come in to help implement what is there. It needs to go further, particularly in the digital environment.

The Deputy mentioned MediaWise which is not the be all and end all. It is a resource for primary schools to help children understand their media environment. Given that 30% of advertising is for unhealthy food, understanding the media environment is a food skill and we have to understand that. Our resource will go some way to help children protect themselves, but obviously that does not deal with the environmental piece. We have to change their environment and help them understand the environment at the same time. We are coming at it from two angles.