Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am not that good. It is a big game changer and I want to pursue it.

As regards secondary schools, I felt we should deal with the primary schools first because younger children are not able to fend for themselves. When they get to secondary school, they might be able to put a bit of ham in the middle of two slices of bread and move on. We will expand it. We have the school meals programme for secondary schools and I hope they can take that up and as time goes on we will roll it out the whole way. That will be a great legacy of this Government in the fact we are going to get it to the primary schools.

I take Deputy Murnane O'Connor's point about people having difficulties. That is why we have the lump sum payments. It puts the money in people's pockets when they need it because they need money in the run-up to Christmas and they need to pay to fill the oil tank or whatever else but then come January, which is a lean month. That is why we are giving the double payment and people will get that wee bit extra because they will have the €12 extra in their payment.

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