The sugar tax won’t halt our obesity crisis
SUGAR TAX is punitive, unfair and discriminatory because it is only aimed at the fizzy drinks industry.
It seems grossly unfair when a milkshake or chocolate bar can contain as much sugar as a can of drink, but is not targeted, and the fat content is not taken into consideration.
Childhood obesity is not just down to fizzy drinks, so why have they been singled out?
Drinks manufacturers have reformulated some drinks to cut the tax they would have to pay.
Tackling obesity and diabetes is not just about more sport in schools or healthy breakfast clubs. Children need lessons in nutritional education at home and school to highlight the health issues caused by sugary foods.
Schools, parents and manufacturers of all food stuffs containing sugar have a joint responsibility.
When it comes to smoking, as well as ever-increasing taxes, tobacco adverts have been banned and cigarettes are not allowed to be on display in shops. The longterm costs to the health service and people’s health through smoking has been addressed by many government initiatives.
But for sugar consumption and obesity, one section of the industry has been singled out and penalised. It is a punitive stab at what is thought to be the symptoms, but not enough to have much effect on the overall causes.
MARTIN PEET, by email.
Testing times
THE significance in the lives of young children of the Junior Cert is grossly exaggerated. This piece of paper is useless for their progress in preparing for a life.
Making a big song and dance about it and telling children that they have achieved something important is wrong. Results described as honours are totally misleading to what are basically young impressionable school children.
The majority of the children will not be inspired toward further education but instead will lose any academic impetus. In particular, it is the reason so few workingclass children attend third-level education.
HARRY MULHERN, Dublin.
On the money
LISTENING to Phil Ní Sheaghdha of the INMO one would think the life of a nurse is akin to working in a war zone.
She stresses how demanding it is and all nurses are exhausted after working their 36 to 40 hours a week in overcrowded wards.
Now we learn that some of them are earning up to €95,000 extra in overtime by working voluntarily 80 to 100-hour week last year (Mail, Wednesday).
Either the job is not as demanding as Ms Ní Sheaghdha states or her members who work these hours voluntarily must be putting patients’ lives at risk from exhaustion, lack of rest and they must be more prone to making mistakes. Perhaps this is why medical litigation is on the increase?
DENIS DENNEHY, Dublin.
Taxing matters
FINE Gael is obsessing about how to make the rich even richer despite all the problems Ireland faces – yet the ‘burden’ on families from paying some tax on an inheritance is the least of them.
To listen to some people you’d be forgiven for thinking they were being taxed at 100% on amounts above €310,000 per person not per estate. If a house is passed on from parents worth €930,000 and they have three children, there is no tax due as they each have a €310,000 allowance. Any tax above that is charged at a rate of 33%. If the value of the asset is €1million, they would pay 33% tax on €70,000 – a sum of €23,100.
Is Fine Gael really trying to argue that three children who have inherited a property or assets worth €1million should not have to pay €23,100 in tax? Is that really the most pressing problem Fine Gael thinks needs to be fixed?
Is it too much to ask a wellheeled voter to pay some of their good luck inheritance back to the society that made it happen so it can be used to provide for the needs of those who aren’t lucky enough to have parents able to leave them some wealth? DESMOND FITZGERALD,
by email.