John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have been contacted by a primary school principal at a DEIS school who accidentally discovered that the school meals programme has been cut and that by May there will not be enough funding to carry the school through to the end of the year. That principal only found out that the funding had been cut on contacting the Department when a number of additional pupils were taken into the school. The principal contacted the Department to see if additional funding could be obtained and was told there will be no such funding and that the school will only get 90% of the funding it received the previous year. It is alarming that the Department did not notify the school that the school meals programme was going to be cut. On foot of that, I contacted a number of other principals in DEIS schools who subsequently contacted the Department to be told they also will only get 90% of the funding they got last year. What are principals in those schools supposed to do when the funding dries up in May? Will the Minister go into the schools and select the 10% of kids in the schools who will not get fed? What will the Minister do?

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