Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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552. To ask the Minister for Health further to Parliamentary Question No. 813 of 5 March 2020, the details of the major EU programme of work related to the code of practice for food and beverage promotion, marketing and sponsorship that Ireland will be engaging in; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4395/20]

Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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553. To ask the Minister for Health the status of progress in implementing the non-broadcast media advertising and marketing of food and non-alcoholic beverages, including sponsorship and retail product placement and voluntary codes of practice; when the monitoring body will be set up to monitor the codes of practice; the timeframe for the designation of the body; the timeframe for the development of guidelines for implementation of the code; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4396/20]

Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 552 and 553 together.

Under the auspices of the Obesity Policy and Action Plan, in 2018 I launched the Voluntary Codes of practice for Non-Broadcast Media Advertising and Marketing of Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages, including Sponsorship and Retail Product Placement. These Codes of Practice were developed in collaboration with the food industry, and the Department had good engagement with the industry during this process. I expect that this engagement will continue in the future.

The process of setting up an implementation and monitoring framework for the Codes of Practice is one which has taken longer than expected with respect to determining the most robust monitoring mechanism to preserve the integrity of the implementation of the Codes for the benefit of public nutritional health. A particular issue with this is the challenge involved in regulating the digital environment, given the sophisticated and rapidly developing techniques which can be used in marketing, including to children.

To progress the Department’s work in this area, Ireland is participating in a Joint Action under the 3rd EU Health Programme called Best ReMaP (which stands for Best practice in Reformulation, Marketing and Public Procurement). Ireland will be co-leading on one of the Work Packages under the Joint Action, on “Best Practices in the field of marketing of unhealthy foods to children and adolescents”. Among the key objectives of this are: to develop effective policies to reduce the exposure of children to unhealthy food marketing, and to deliver protocols and tools to measure the reduction in the marketing of unhealthy food to children, with a particular focus on digital marketing and health inequalities. Seventeen EU countries will be participating in this Work Package and this sharing of expertise and experience is expected to be greatly beneficial in informing Ireland’s overall approach to implementing and monitoring the Codes of Practice.

The Joint Action application is awaiting final approval from the EU Commission. This was delayed due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 crisis, but it is hoped that approval will be received in the coming weeks. It is expected that work under the Joint Action will commence in September 2020.