Ms Helen Faughnan:

I see addressing the issue of food poverty in children as two-pronged. We must not forget parental responsibility. Earlier, I referred to the need for education and trying to train parents in food preparation. Ms Keenan made reference to the school garden, etc. We have come a long way. I am the product of two parents from the country, so our back garden was always half covered in vegetables even though I grew up in Dublin. We need to concentrate on parental responsibility and how to support parents in terms of money management and assisting and training them to provide healthy nutritious food. This would have the two-pronged effect of helping to reduce the obesity risk for children.

We have seen many developments and improvements in the school meals programme. We have increased the number of schools in the DEIS programme this year. Thankfully, with the increased funding - some €3 million extra next year - we are going to increase the level of payments. Any extension to non-DEIS schools would have to be considered in a budgetary process. The Department is committed to the scheme and to working with whatever new strategy comes about to make it a more consistent and feasible scheme in future.