Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Before I came in here, I spoke to the principal of a DEIS band 1 school in my area, Scoil Cholmcille, which was one of 281 schools that applied for the new hot school meals programme. The school was most disappointed not to have been selected for the programme. It is in a highly disadvantaged area. It seems that quite a few non-DEIS schools were approved for the hot school meals programme, but not schools in areas of extreme disadvantage which, let us be clear, have been hit very significantly by, and have felt the impact more acutely of, school closures due to Covid, and so on. The school principal reported that hot school meal pilot programmes run by the school made a huge difference to attendance and the ability of children to focus. Yet, such schools have been denied access to the programme.

For the sake of 90 schools, could the Government not come up with the money to give all the schools that applied access to the hot school meals programme? The principal I spoke to told me that the additional cost of the programme would be 80 cent per student. He also reported to me an answer from the Department that €5 million is unspent in the school meals programme. In other words, it is likely that a fraction of that unspent money would actually allow those 90 schools that were refused access to the programme to get it. I ask the Taoiseach to do something about it.

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