Seán Power (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)

The report of the national task force on obesity, Obesity — the Policy Challenges, was presented to the Taoiseach in May 2005. The report contains 93 recommendations aimed at tackling overweight and obesity. These relate to actions across six broad sectors: high level government; education; social and community; health; food, commodities, production and supply; and the physical environment. Additional funding of €3 million has been made available to the Health Service Executive to support the implementation of the report's recommendations. The strategic planning and reform implementation of the HSE have approved the following projects to take place this year: expanding the healthy food made easy programme, recruiting four physical activity officers to target obesity in all settings, providing four specialist community dietician posts for obesity and weight management to support all initiatives, the procurement of equipment for growth monitoring and further progress work with the food service sector on healthy food provision. The HSE has confirmed that additional resources will be allocated to obesity services in St. Columcille's Hospital during 2006. In 2006, the executive will spend approximately €25 million on health promotion, of which approximately €5 million per annum will be spent on measures to prevent obesity. In addition, much of the work of hospital and community dieticians is concerned with the treatment of obesity.

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