Sir, – The Government need not worry about obesity (“Minister plans ‘sugar tax’ on sweet drinks to help fight obesity”, Home News, November 24th): as people go hungry due to the cuts they will lose weight naturally. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – In his book: Advice to a Young Scientist, the Nobel Laureate immunologist Sir Peter Medawar wrote: “The intensity with which a hypothesis is held to be true, has no bearing on its validity”. Although it may be a widely held belief, even among eminent physicians, the evidence to support a causative role of sugar in obesity is weak and conflicting. Clearly, that is not the message being transmitted to the Minister for Health and his staff at Hawkins House who obviously are of the view that sugar does indeed play a causative role in obesity to such an extent that the Minister intends to tax sugar (Stephen Collins, Home News, November 24th).
Ireland is extremely fortunate in having a suite of national dietary surveys, which because of the level of detail recorded and retained, are the envy of our European colleagues. These surveys, funded solely by the Irish taxpayer through the competitive research funds of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine are utterly ignored by Hawkins House.
The fact that sugar taxes have been introduced in some countries in the EU seems good enough for Hawkins House. They do, however, make two assumptions. The first is that a detailed evidence-based analysis underlies the policy to tax sugar in these countries, drawing on local data of dietary intake and body weight patterns. The second is the assumption that what applies to the dietary habits in Hungary (a sugar-taxing state) automatically applies here in Ireland. I would contest both assumptions.
Consider the available evidence linking sugar intake to dental caries and to obesity. In the case of dental caries, across time and space, every study, which has examined this relationship, has found that as the frequency of sugar intake rises, that of dental caries also rises. In contrast, the evidence linking sugary foods (soft drinks, grapes etc) and obesity is, as they say, all over the shop. The data remain unclear, inconsistent, unimpressive and a thousand miles from the strength of evidence to support a tax. Without being overly technical, the reliability of food intake data decreases as body weight increases, meaning that food intake data in obesity is inherently limited.
Moreover, as we drive sugar intake down, fat levels will rise. So, is it proposed to tax both – 50 per cent of our caloric intake? Hawkins House and the Department of Health have responsibility for formulating policy on dietary health. However, it does not have the necessary skills or structures to take the rich databases available in Ireland, thanks to its taxpayers, and to analyse them to formulate evidence based advice, which would inform policy. That should be given to the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) which does have the required skills and structures to build up evidence- based data. In its scientific risk assessment, FSAI has an excellent national and global reputation. Somehow, I doubt this will happen.
Hawkins House oversaw a National Obesity Task Force. There are seven full professors of human nutrition in Ireland and none were asked to participate in this task force. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Minister for Health James Reilly has predicted that a “sugar tax” would raise €50 million per annum. Discussion thus far has centred on obesity prevention; there has been no mention of the fact that the consumption of sweetened drinks is a causative factor in tooth decay.
This omission is not surprising, as dentistry in Ireland is the neglected branch of medicine. The following issues bear testament to this: the stopping of all treatment (except the annual oral examination) under the PRSI dental scheme, the restriction of treatment under the Medical Card Dental Scheme to emergency dental care, the closure of clinics and the failure to fill the vacant chief dental officer post.
Some of the windfall from this new tax should be ring-fenced for the provision of dental services. This “tooth tax” could then show some benefit to the health of the nation. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – I have some practical suggestions for income tax, as we approach the budget.
1. Scrap tax individualisation. As things stand, a one-income family in 2012 will start to pay income tax at the higher rate on any income above €40,000 approximately. The corresponding figure for a two-income family is over €60,000. An obvious measure for generating some much-needed tax revenue, which would also have the effect of restoring some fairness to the system for the first time in over a decade, would be to make the cut-off point €50,000 for both one- and two-income families.
2. Instead of maintaining the fiction that everyone earning less than €100,000 per annum is in the same boat, introduce a graduated system: say 50 per cent for incomes in the range €75,000-€100,000, 60 per cent for incomes between €100,000and €125,000, and 70 per cent thereafter.
3. Introduce tax relief for citizens subscribing to 10-year government bonds. These bonds would be interest-free, but subscribers could avoid tax at the proposed higher rates (50 per cent plus in the examples above) by subscribing to these bonds. This would give high-earning citizens a major incentive to invest in Ireland’s recovery programme rather than, say, moving their savings abroad. It would also help mitigate the disincentive effects of high marginal tax rates. – Yours, etc,