ghc image size

I just recently starting to use the ghc compiler and am astonished by the size of the executables. Out of interest, why are they so large? Is there any work in progress to make the resulting executable/object somewhat more "normal" in size? I read in the Haskell mailing list archives discussions relating to reducing the barriers to broader acceptance of functional programming by the general programming community (in particular Haskell) - I would regard this as one of these barriers.