Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Healthy Ireland fund was established in 2017 with an allocation of €5 million and with additional allocations of €5 million in 2018 and 2019. The first round of the Fund was distributed through Local Community Development Committees, Children and Young Person’s Services Committees and statutory organisations. The aim of the Fund is to support innovative, cross sectoral, evidence-based projects, programmes and initiatives that support the implementation of key national policies in areas such as Obesity, Healthy Eating, Smoking, Alcohol, Physical Activity and Sexual Health. The Fund is primarily administered by Pobal on behalf of the Department.

A range of community cooking and nutrition programmes have been funded by the Healthy Ireland Fund through allocations to Local Community Development Committees and Children and Young People's Services Committees. This funding amounted to €152,759 in 2017 and €201,597 in 2018.

The HSE Health and Wellbeing Division, through their Health Promotion and Improvement within CHOs, and in association with community partnership organisations provide training on nutrition and cooking to parents/families and other groups in disadvantaged communities through two types of Community Cooking Programmes - Healthy Food Made Easy and the Cook It. Both programmes are managed by Community Dietitians within the HSE.

In addition, Community Food Initiatives funded by Safefood aim to positively influence the eating habits of families with children in low-income communities across the island of Ireland. Safefood recently announced the recipients of funding for the 2019-2021 initiative, investing a total of €630,000 over the next three years to help each of the 14 successful projects set up, manage and sustain their work.

Since first launched in 2010, 30 communities across the island of Ireland have received funding under successive Community Food Initiatives. A key feature of the programme is that learnings and experiences from previous programmes are shared among the new initiatives. New initiatives are also encouraged and supported to enhance the long-term sustainability of their work from the outset.

Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 180 and 181 together.

Healthy Start is a UK-wide statutory scheme providing a nutritional safety net to pregnant women and children under four in low-income families in receipt of certain benefits or tax credits. Healthy Start supports public health policies by encouraging breastfeeding and a healthy diet. Any costs associated with the development of a similar programme here would be addressed as part of the annual estimates process.

First 5 is the recently published Whole-of-Government Strategy for Babies, Young Children and their Families (2019-2028).

As part of this cross-departmental approach, my Department has commenced work with the Department of Children and Youth Affairs on establishing a work programme on food poverty, and this will consider measures such as the one referred to by the Deputy.

Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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Healthy Ireland is the National Framework for Improved Health and Wellbeing 2013-2025. Healthy Ireland is based on evidence and experience from around the world which clearly shows that to create positive changes in health and well-being takes the involvement of the whole of Government and all of society working in unison. There are a number of Health Promotion policies and programmes that fall under the scope of the Healthy Ireland Framework that are being implemented in the Health Services and across several Government Departments, Agencies and settings. A central aim of Healthy Ireland is to ‘create an environment where every individual and sector of society can play their part in achieving a healthy Ireland”. It is therefore extremely difficult to classify and specifically quantify the funding that is being earmarked for each programme and to give an indication if an evaluation has taken place for each over the previous five years.

However, I can give the Deputy information relating to Funds expended by the Department of Health on health promotion programmes. In July 2016, the Government approved the creation of a Healthy Ireland Fund and subsequently provided an initial allocation of €5 million in Budget 2017 to kick-start the establishment of the Fund. The Fund has distributed €10mil from my Department in 2017 and 2018 to all Local Community Development Committees, Children and Young Persons Services Committees and several national statutory organisations for the promotion of health and well-being activity. A further €5mil will be distributed in 2019. The aim of the Healthy Ireland Fund is to stimulate and support innovative, cross-sectoral, evidence-based projects, programmes and initiatives that support the implementation of the key national policies in areas such as Obesity, Smoking, Alcohol, Physical Activity, Healthy Eating and Sexual Health at a local level. In 2017, the results of the first year of the Healthy Ireland Fund have been very encouraging, especially in relation to the targeting of socially disadvantaged communities. Of the 382 actions delivered under strand 1, 2,456 organisations were reported to be involved in the implementation of local priority actions and an estimated 770,000 people were reported to have benefitted. These actions generally targeted health inequality, especially people living in areas of social disadvantage (71% of actions), people with disabilities (45%), people from new communities including refugees and asylum seekers (39%) and members of the Traveller community (36%). Similarly, the total number of people reported as benefiting from national actions under Strand 2 was 130,735. The number of organisations benefiting was reported as 1,785, and almost two thirds of actions (63%) reported a focus on people with disabilities and/or chronic illnesses (including mental health issues) and over half of actions (54%) were focused on people living in areas of social disadvantage.

The HSE provides funding and resources for health promotion programmes under Healthy Ireland and I therefore will refer this PQ to them for further response.