Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Cathaoirleach on his elevation and congratulate the Leader, both of whom will do a fine job.

I want to highlight an issue that I highlighted several times in the previous Seanad - that is, the area of childhood obesity. In particular, I highlight a report by the Irish Heart Foundation which has found that junk food companies or food companies which are selling particular junk food products are purposely targeting young Irish teenagers on social media sites such as Facebook. I suppose these companies are trying to get them as young as they can but, as young as they are on there, they are being targeted. The report revealed that the sophisticated techniques used to target children online through Facebook include tagging and comments. They do it in a humorous way and sometimes make reference to sports stars and festivals. It is subliminal and sophisticated. According to a child psychiatrist - this morning I was researching this a little - these companies are using high-tech analytics to target children directly so that they can monitor them. Perhaps Senators have seen on social media that if one shows an interest in a certain matter, suddenly one finds one has many other things to do with that on one's feed. This is dangerous. We have legislation in place to restrict this type of advertising, which is targeted at children in specific ways, and social media should not be any different. According to the research, 75% of parents were extremely unhappy when they discovered that this was happening. They had not a clue that this type of marketing was getting at their children. We have a serious issue with childhood obesity in this country, with one child in four either overweight or obese - I must have stated that statistic 150 times in the Seanad. We have not done enough to date. The Government now has a Minister of State with responsibility for health promotion, and I do not want that to be symbolic.I want us to take this issue seriously as the situation is grave. Our hospitals already suffer under the weight of diabetes, cancer and other lifestyle-related issues. Obesity is the elephant in the room. We have to address and face up to the issue. Some people are very aware of it. The vast majority of the population are busy living and perhaps not putting as much focus on it as we should, as a society. I ask the Leader to arrange a debate on obesity, in particular childhood obesity, as early as possible. I ask him to bring the new Minister in here to discuss how we will tackle the problem in a real way and have no more symbolism.