Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I cannot answer that for the Deputy now but will revert to the Deputy on when it is expected to be available for publication.

Committee priorities concluded advancing the work on publishing the strategy dealing with dementia, which is so important. It continued to advance legislation for the Child and Family Support Agency, which will take over the responsibilities from the HSE on 1 January and progress the legislation to put Children First guidance on a statutory basis. Another objective is making progress on the implementation of the early actions on the national literacy strategy, including the appointment of literacy and numeracy advisers to support teachers and the development of the new education passport to alert schools where a student requires additional supports on having transferred from another school. This has been around for a while.

In respect of alcohol misuse, the Government approved the drafting of the legislation in the form of the Public Health (Alcohol) Bill to provide for minimum unit pricing for retailing of alcohol products.

That cannot come into effect until the court case currently before the European Commission, taken as a result of a decision by the Scottish Assembly, is dealt with. Other areas relate to the advertising and marketing of alcohol, with the intention of limiting advertising of alcohol on television to evening hours from 2016 and so forth. We are also dealing with the regulation of sports sponsorship - specifically, devising a way to place the existing voluntary code on sports sponsorship on a statutory footing. The Department of the Taoiseach is chairing a group which will discuss and report within twelve months on the question of sports sponsorship in the longer term.

These are just some of the issues that the Cabinet committee on social policy has engaged with recently. Clearly, the committee deals with a volume of complex and sometimes sensitive work. It is certainly much more effective than it used to be, when meetings were held on a very irregular basis, with no real focus or requirement to get things done.

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