Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this decision. There are quite a number of DEIS schools in my constituency of Cork North-Central. I welcome the fact that the hot meals programme will be available in all DEIS schools from September. One problem with rolling out and expanding the programme is that we started off in 2020 with 30 schools on the hot meals programme. Now it is up to 500 but the Minister believes we can have all the structures and the necessary supports in place by September to double the number of schools that are currently in the programme. The Minister mentioned that the programme will involve 500 schools by September and that by the end of the year it will involve more than 1,000 schools. I wonder what progress has been made to date in making sure everything is ready to go from 1 September.

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