Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy's last question would be more appropriately directed to the Department administering that programme. The money available under the programme is used to great advantage, as any of us who have been in schools would have seen. We have devised models of best practice for breakfast clubs, which provide that food is offered to all pupils in a class or in a school rather than targeting individual children, that the food is nutritious and hot, a specific room is allocated to serve the food which is a familiar place to the children and parents are encouraged to become involved in the programme. It works very well. Unfortunately, as I have said before, it is a terrible indictable of our society that children will get out bed to go for breakfast and then they stay in school, having been fed. It is a hugely successful programme.

The Deputy asked about the school completion programme. We have examined various elements of it and decided to adopt a co-ordinated approach to the whole area of disadvantage, taking the best elements and progressing them further and, more particularly, targeting resources at areas that need them most. Disbursing money in many different areas throughout the country is not having the best effect because we need to specifically target resources. There are very good elements in some of these programmes which we will continue to operate under the new co-ordinated programme with extra investment to tackle disadvantage.

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