Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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112. To ask the Minister for Health his plans for further developing the Healthy Ireland plan with a view to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42011/20]

Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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Healthy Ireland, A Framework for Improved Health and Wellbeing 2013-2025, is the national framework for action to improve the health and wellbeing of Ireland.  The Framework is now past the mid-way point for the implementation. 

Since publication in 2013, there has been significant progress in implementation. This has included:

- A focus on building an enabling environment for cross-sectoral and collaborative action, supported by a stakeholder engagement and communications strategy.

- Significant cross government and intersectoral partnerships and working has been created by the Framework.

- A suite of national policies and plans to address risk factors such as obesity, tobacco and physical inactivity have been published, and policy direction across areas such as cancer, maternity care, drugs and mental health has been informed and influenced by Healthy Ireland.

Notwithstanding the progress to date, there is an urgent need to scale and expand the activity across all strands of the work from Government to local level. To support effective implementation, and to capitalise on further opportunities to involve more sectors in implementation.

In late 2019 the Health and Wellbeing Unit in my Department commenced the development of a Strategic Action Plan for the next phase of the Healthy Ireland Framework.  Despite the challenges caused by Covid-19, which has caused some delays to the original timeline for this process, significant progress on the development of the Strategic Action Plan for Healthy Ireland has been made.  To date the process has already completed a rapid review of previous progress, extensive stakeholder engagement, a desktop review of other jurisdictions for best practice, and a review of goals for alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals and the Programme for Government.  

Presently a set of emerging priorities is being considered in partnership with other Government Departments and internally in the Department of Health.  The Healthy Ireland Strategic Action Plan is expected to be finalised in early 2021, for agreement across Government and subsequent publication.

The Government Plan for Living with COVID-19: Resilience and Recovery 2020-2021 highlighted the important role that individual and community resilience is playing in contributing to our ongoing response to COVID-19.  Since its initiation seven years ago, Healthy Ireland has progressed the implementation of an all-of-Government approach to improving and supporting the health and wellbeing of the people of Ireland.  Through strong partnerships with a multitude of bodies, Healthy Ireland provides direction and focus to support individuals, communities, local authorities and national organisations to engage in initiatives and activities that support health and wellbeing.  With its existing links to Local Authorities and local community activation, the Healthy Ireland Fund provides the mechanism to allocate resources to support the community resilience campaign at local level.

At the heart of the Keep Well campaign is helping people - individuals & communities - to keep up their resilience & wellbeing through an especially challenging winter and through to spring.  People are being encouraged to plan some “self-care” every day or week to get them through the winter and are being supported with information and resources to help them to do so.  The campaign is focused on five major themes:

- Keeping active- keeping active and being outdoors, even during the winter, is important to help physical and mental health and wellbeing.

- Staying connected - staying connected with people, addressing isolation, supporting volunteerism and initiatives that support person-to-person connection is important to our wellbeing.

- Switching off and being creative- switching off and being creative or learning something new, getting back to nature and finding ways to relax can help our general wellbeing.

- Eating well - by nourishing your body and mind we can develop a better connection between the food we eat and how we feel and positively impact our physical and mental wellbeing.

- Minding your mood– equipping people with information on where to go if they need support. This will also be linked with the local community helpline to ensure that people can access the support they need.

A series of initiatives is being rolled out under these themes, continuing into spring 2021.  It is our intent that the partnerships that have been forged in responding to the challenge of Covid-19 across Government and society will be maintained in the future work towards the vision of a Healthy Ireland.