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	A new junior health minister has revealed that she used think she was &quot;curvaceous&quot; but now realises she is actually obese.</p>
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	Marcella Corcoran Kennedy, who has responsibility for health promotion, also told the D&aacute;il of death threats she received during the election.</p>
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	She described it as a &quot;sad fact&quot; that one in four children are obese and more than half of adults are overweight. &quot;It&#39;s something that I&#39;m going to have to look into my heart about. I used to think I was curvaceous, but now I&#39;m told I&#39;m actually obese so I better do something about it,&quot; she said.</p>
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	Ms Corcoran Kennedy said she would encourage people to eat better food and cut down on alcohol and tobacco.</p>
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	In a separate contribution to a debate on mental health, the first-time minister warned that the word &#39;bullying&#39; was losing its impact because some people were using it in a &quot;facetious&quot; way.</p>
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	The Offaly TD went on to describe how her life was threatened on social media.</p>
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	&quot;I don&#39;t believe that the person who threatened me had any intention of carrying anything out, but at the same time it wasn&#39;t a very nice thing to think that there was a man somewhere in the country that thought the world would be a better place without me in it.&quot;</p>
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	She added: &quot;That&#39;s actually just a horrible thing to take in as a public representative and as a citizen of this country.</p>
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	&quot;It&#39;s entirely wrong that that type of behaviour from adults is tolerated because we wouldn&#39;t tolerate it from children in the playground.&quot;</p>
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	(Published by Irish Independent on the 2nd June 2016)</p>
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	<a href="http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/i-thought-i-was-curvaceous-but-im-obese-minister-34766477.html">http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/i-thought-i-was-curvaceous-but-im-obese-minister-34766477.html</a></p>
