Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 8 December 2020
792. Deputy Alan Dillon asked the Minister for Health his plans to review progress and renew the Healthy Ireland strategy where necessary, given that we are now seven years into the Healthy Ireland planned timeframe of 2013-2025; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42127/20]
View answerHealthy 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; and
- 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.
