Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There were crisps on the top rung but the rest of it was okay. It is not that we cannot have vending machines but a case of what is put into them. The school food programme is coming up a lot in discussing the obesity policy and we hope to address matters such as food poverty, the healthy provision of food in schools and the education of children. We will engage with the Department of Education and Skills on the policy and Senators have touched on how important it is to do that.

Senator Noone mentioned maternal obesity and it is acknowledged that this is a problem. Very often, obesity starts before conception and in the womb, in some ways. That is going to be a key element of the new clinical guidelines being developed by the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland in consultation with the HSE. A key action that could make a big difference is breast feeding, the rates of which in Ireland are very low and much lower than they should be. It is something that we would like to push in the next couple of years. This should not just be advice around breast feeding but dedicated midwifery positions to help women to breast feed if they are having difficulty.

Senator Crown and I have engaged before in this Chamber on modifications to lifetime community rating. There could be a discount for non-smokers or people with a body mass index, BMI, under 30. BMI is not everything and extremely healthy people with a decent amount of muscle mass can have high BMI but that does not mean they are obese. Any discount, by definition, must result in a loading for somebody else and we would have to consider the implications of loading health insurance policies for people who are obese, smokers or so on. We could then be returning to the inverse care law, where health insurance is more expensive for those who perhaps need it most and less expensive for those who do not. This must be thought through.

I am particularly pleased that there was a good level of agreement across the Chamber in how to address the issues and experience tells us that there is a variety of ways in which all sectors can contribute to tackling obesity. Both obesity and people being overweight are major public and personal health concerns, particularly in children and those with chronic diseases. I have outlined some of the measures under way and we will continue to add to and strengthen these. Obesity is not a simple issue and its causes are complex and its solutions whole-of-Government and whole-of-society approaches. My Department and I are determined to develop a robust and comprehensive obesity policy and action plan under the Healthy Ireland framework this year and drive the implementation in future.