Experts call on Irish to tackle obesity problem

All of society is being urged to come together to tackle Ireland's growing obesity problem.

One in three seven year olds here are currently overweight or obese.

Health experts are gathering in Dublin today to discuss ways of addressing obesity.

They have been hearing from Robin Schepper who previously worked as the executive director of Michelle Obama's 'Let's Move' campaign to tackle childhood obesity.

She said there is no silver bullet and everyone has to pitch in.

"It's a combination of things…everyone has a role to play whether you're in government, the private sector, a parent, a grandparent, everyone has a role to play," she said.

"The other message is that it took us a long time to get here so it's not going to change in one or two years, in the United States it took 30 years for our obesity epidemic to get tackled so I'm sure it's going to take another 30 years to disengage from that."