Sinn Féin TD for Dublin South West Seán Crowe has said that the government must do more to tackle childhood obesity as Safefood Ireland evidence to the Oireachtas Health Committee indicates that they have done little to move the needle since the last obesity action plan was introduced in 2016.

Teachta Crowe said:

“Evidence from Safefood Ireland to the Oireachtas Health Committee yesterday indicates that this government has failed to tackle the issue of childhood obesity in any meaningful way. Safefood’s evidence indicated that 1 in 5 children suffer from obesity and that this figure rises to 1 in 4 among children in poor and disadvantaged areas.

“This figure is in line with evidence given by the HSE to the Oireachtas Committee on Children in 2018. In six years, we have not moved the needle when it comes to confronting this issue and it is young and poor children who are suffering most.

“A range of additional measures must be considered in the fight against childhood obesity. We must radically increase funding for Healthy Ireland through sugar tax revenues. We should restrict television marketing of unhealthy food and drinks to after 7pm. We also need to work with retailers so that parents do not have to run a gauntlet of unhealthy foods when they are out shopping with their children.

“A key policy would be to consider the implementation of a tax on high salt, high fat products, similar to the way we tax sugar. That led to lower levels of sugar in many drink products and it is time we tackled the other major contributors to unhealthy weight.

“Some of these measures may seem extreme but with childhood obesity leading to ever greater levels of diabetes and other health concerns, we cannot afford not to. It is well past time that we started taking the issue of childhood obesity seriously.”