Ms Sinéad Keenan:

I thank members for those questions. I will start with Deputy Charlie McConalogue. Northern Ireland has a food and schools forum which was established in 2009. Obviously there is a very different tradition and legacy of school food provision in Northern Ireland. The food and schools forum is co-led by the Departments of education and health. It has implemented nutritional standards and develops policy around the need. The two Departments are exploring the food needs among the school population and responding to them. They also draw in key partners, such as the education authority. I am not sure of the exact structure but they would support the administration of it through that scheme. The benefit of that is policy coherence. At the moment we have five Departments with a role to play in school food provision. Obviously we have the school meals programme which I understand is quite an administrative function in terms of distributing the funding to the schools. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine administers the EU school milk scheme and the EU fruit and vegetable scheme - the food dudes programme - which involves a different administrative application process for schools. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs has the school completion programme and is a key partner in delivering school food at local level. The Department of Education and Skills has a role to play in terms of the infrastructure available to schools. The Department of Health has a role around the nutrition guidelines and so on.

There are more than 100 DEIS schools not availing of the school food programme. Through our work we have run workshops to support schools which are entitled to the school meals programme to draw down. Largely the feedback we get from them is that there may be a need but they do not know where to start. They do not have the space as Ms Helen Faughnan mentioned. We do not have that tradition of school food provision and we do not have the space, which is particularly an issue for rural schools which are often two classroom or two teacher schools. That there is nowhere to provide food is an issue. There is also the administrative burden. When it is a teaching principal school who will do the application process? That the programme must be up and running for three weeks before the funding draw down is a challenge. The main issues for schools in terms of drawing down funding appears to be the lack of facilities, the lack of upfront funding and the lack of capacity among staff to actually deliver a school food programme. In addition, the money is available for the food item only. No start-up money is available for getting bowls, spoons, toasters, fridges etc., the equipment needed to provide food.

I assure Deputy Ó Snodaigh that schools are very resourceful in terms of their fundraising capabilities and how they can manage to deliver a model of good practice is phenomenal. I can tell him about a parent volunteer who is running a breakfast club in north Dublin. She has been working at the breakfast club for three years and has upskilled to become a fundraiser. She has gathered signatures from parents. She has approached the local supermarket and the local bread company who are providing food in addition to what the school can draw down from the school meals programme.

A single body would co-ordinate existing resources. A huge amount of resources is going into the school meals programme. By co-ordinating the different resources they can have a greater impact at the school level. It would ease the administrative burden on schools to have a one-stop shop with that approach. Schools do not know where to start. There are so many different strands and concerns around the administrative burden.

I would make one final point on stigma. That is a very real concern for schools. That is certainly something for us, it is not above dividing or judging. We want to ensure the school meals programme is provided to those in need. Schools are best equipped to address this issue. Schools promote it as a reward. A core group of children would attend but there is a reward system in schools. For whatever reason, a class would be selected and a number of students would be selected for this week and that is how they get around it. In other schools it is open to all where the children pay €1 each. For those who are unable to pay the charge is waived but is done at office level so the children themselves would not know that.