John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)

Like all the other public representatives have done today, I congratulate the Minister and Department on the service provided to public representatives. This specific contact lines and emails per scheme are very beneficial. The Minister mentioned it himself: other Government Departments could learn from the Department of Social Protection when it comes to responding to requests from public representatives.

On the hot school meals programme and the underspend on it, from my understanding in my constituency, a lot of the schools have had a challenge in getting it together for the operation of the programme in terms of setting up a room for it and perhaps setting up an additional ESB installation. There has been a challenge in trying to get schools involved in that process. The Minister said he hopes that, by the end of 2025, all schools that have been approved and willing to operate that will be in a position to do it. It might be nice to get the figures for how many primary schools are currently accepting the hot school meals programme and how many people have signed up and are still waiting to get it.

It would be important to have a discussion on the supplementary welfare allowance and the role of the community welfare officer, CWO. I will discuss this with the clerk and perhaps we could arrange that for a future meeting in the new year.