Ms Michelle Murphy:

School meals are a really good example of a very successful universal programme. They have been rolled out to all primary schools. We would like to see them rolled out to DEIS secondary schools. There is potentially a need for review of the funding that goes to each provider in terms of what they get for each meal, particularly if we look at food price inflation, for example, in the past 12 months. From what I see, the Department's review was very positive. We saw the value of rolling the programme out to all primary schools. Now we need to start with the DEIS second level schools and then move to all second level schools.

The programme has huge social benefits. It provides major support to families, and there are also nutritional benefits. There have been questions around the nutritional value of menus, depending on providers involved, but those are things that can be worked on. We often criticise policy, but there are also examples of good policy being implemented. Those are the kinds of things we should be supporting and expanding. It is an important programme and we should look at expanding it to DEIS second level schools to begin with and then extending it to all second level schools.