A new survey is to be launched by the Department of Health in order to discover how healthy we as a nation really are. The Healthy Ireland survey intends to cover issues such as such as smoking, alcohol consumption, nutrition, physical activity levels and weight management.

10,000 households will be randomly selected to take part in the survey. It is due to begin in the coming weeks. The Department of Health hopes that the findings of the survey will be made available to the public as early as April or May of next year.

This will be the first comprehensive survey on health in this country in seven years and Health Minister, Leo Varadkar believes that there has been ‘huge changes’ in Irish health in that time.

Speaking recently Mr. Varadkar said “On the one hand, more people are more aware of the importance of diet, lifestyle, health, wellbeing and mental fitness. But as a nation, we now face even bigger challenges on obesity, stress, diet and many other areas, so there’s a big job ahead of us.”

He also said that the data gathered from this survey will help ensure that the right health policies are in place and will also ‘tell us what areas we need to focus on in the future’. The households throughout the country that have been selected to take part should receive a letter in the post asking for participation in the coming weeks.