Ms Orla Twomey:

There have been 7,500 adjudications. We received over 30,000 complaints but not all were within the remit of the code. Sometimes we receive complaints on packaging or non-commercial advertising but these do not fall within our remit. Sometimes there is no basis to a complaint or we work with the advertisers to amend the advertising, which means there is no need to have a formal adjudication. We see our role as one of ensuring that advertising is either amended or withdrawn. We achieve that either through negotiation with the advertiser if there is something that can be easily done to make the advertisement compliant or by means of a formal adjudication of our complaints committee in cases where there may be a precedent involved. The process we go through for investigation is quite robust.

The percentage I provided in respect of complaints in respect of food advertising relates to all such advertising. We do not have a mechanism in the system to easily extract which foods might be considered to be high in fat, salt and sugar. That is a challenge. However, I looked at the figures and made a somewhat informed and educated guesstimate. Where food is the product complained about, the basis of the complaint might relate to a misleading price or to content that a parent might find offensive for a child to see. As a result, it might not relate specifically to the fact that the product is food - it could be any product. I estimate that 40% of the complaints involved related to products that could be considered high in fat, salt and sugar. The other 60% related to products which would not be considered high in fat, salt and sugar. Of those complaints which related to children - whether it was that children were referred to in the advertisement or the complaint - I estimate that 19 were in respect of children and products that were high in fat, salt and sugar. The number is very small.