Ms Janis Morrissey:

If I could address Deputy Mitchell's query regarding engagement with the boards of management, for the past number of years we have been running a healthy catering award in post-primary schools where we take a whole school approach. We look to engage with the principal, the teachers, the students, the parents and the board of management. We take that holistic approach because we know that we need the buy-in of all of those stakeholders for there to be any sustainable change. We have awarded 50 schools across the country with this healthy catering award. It is where we are supporting changes in the catering practices and the food provision. We are bringing our nutrition expertise to bear to support the caterers to make those changes, but working in an incremental fashion to explain to the students why this is happening to make sure that there is buy-in from management at a top level as well.

The challenge we keep bumping into is that we can give information about healthy catering practices, but if they do not have the equipment and there is no funding source naturally available, we are operating within restrictions. Nevertheless there have been some great examples throughout the country of quite radical changes. I have seen the fruits of that labour in respect of engagement with the students, better concentration levels etc. It can be done but the structures need to be right for it to be done in a sustainable way. We are fitting into the vacuum created by the absence of national guidance on what food should be provided in schools.