Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

Much can be done to promote healthy eating. It is promoted in the schools through the SPHE programme through encouraging students to learn about nutrition and food at primary and post-primary level. Family support services do great work in this area. We have seen this in our communities with the implementation of initiatives such as the Springboard Project where families in very disadvantaged areas are encouraged and brought in and receive training on the nutritional aspect. I visited very disadvantaged schools that run a parallel programme for mothers who receive adult education on healthy eating and food. Full credit is due to one school in Tallaght that not only brought in the mothers and taught them about healthy eating but gave them the cooking implements to bring home. If the class made a Chinese stir-fry, the mothers were given a wok to keep, which was a lovely idea. It was like teaching a man to fish and giving him the equipment to do so. This programme is working and it must be promoted by way of a cross-departmental approach.

Under the new disadvantaged action plan, having evaluated in-house the programmes that have worked, we will extend the schemes that work.

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