Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister of State said, there are overlapping Departments here but I think there should also be some concerns about the length of the school lunch break. Small break is typically ten minutes in the morning and big break is half an hour in the afternoon. In that half an hour, it is typically ten minutes in the classroom to eat and 20 minutes to play in the playground. Part of eating is what you are eating, the quality, the calorie content and the nutritional balance of it but the other point is how much are you eating and how quickly are you eating. You will often see children wolfing down food because the game of soccer, catch, bulldog or whatever they are going to play in the yard matters more to them. They may not fully be hungry as well as that time of the day. They are having a hot meal at ten past 12, which is debatable if that is the right time of the day to be loading up on your nutrition. It is wolfed down, they run out and they are back in again. It is one thing to have a sandwich, a bottle of water and an apple in ten minutes and go but it may not be the best way to try to eat that hot meal that comes out quite hot, in fact, from the school's heating chamber. The length of lunch breaks is not conducive to having these hot meals and the children are wolfing them down, quite literally, quickly to get out to the yard.