Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I understand it very well. The hot school meals programme, which is working extremely well, was introduced by my colleague, Senator Regina Doherty, when she was Minister for Social Protection. The back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance is being increased by the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Humphreys. The former Minister for Education, Deputy Joe McHugh, introduced the grant to encourage school books rental schemes and extended that to all DEIS schools so we understand very well that the cost of going back to school is very high for families. This is nothing new but has been the case for years. We were working on it then and under this Government, we are working on it now. In particular, the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, put much effort into discussions today and yesterday with the Ministers for Social Protection and Public Expenditure and Reform to see if there is more we can do in addition to what is already committed to - an increase in the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance kicking in next week and an increase in the SUSI grant for third level kicking in in the next few weeks. However, we acknowledge that when those decisions were made last year inflation was not anticipated to be as high as it is now and that waiting until September is too late specifically when it relates to back to school and back to college.

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