Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join with Senator Barrett in commenting on Senator Burke's excellent Bill, which had unanimous support in the House yesterday. It caters for a problem that is not extremely frequent but it nevertheless changes a loophole, which should be encouraged. I agree with all the comments regarding who is in charge. We do not know exactly what has happened but I encourage the Minister to allow the Bill to go through, as was intended up to an hour before its arrival in the House. It was considered acceptable to that point.

There is a dangerous gap in Ireland in the detail of statistics for children, particularly with regard to obesity.

In a week when we learned that one in four children in Ireland are obese it is something we need to give urgent attention to. On the website of the UK National Health Service there is an obesity or body mass calculator. Parents can put in basic information about their children and assess where they are. When a child is born she is weighed regularly to see that she is gaining weight in the appropriate way. There should be a system whereby the progress of a child's health, comprising all the various components, including weight, be assessed not on a seriously regular basis but certainly frequently. Moreover, once a child presents to a general practitioner showing signs of obesity, serious measures should be taken to deal with it.

There has been public consultation and a good report on the subject of lifestyle and how to reduce cancer and increase life expectancy. It is time for us to debate this with the Minister in order that he can realise the conclusions of the report and take on board many of the concerns being raised by Members on a regular basis, especially with regard to the increasing obesity problem in the country.