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

It was slightly different when I was doing it because mammy got the blame for the lunches and got the job as well.

Parents have enough to worry about. They are running out the door to work in the morning and when they know the child will get a good staple meal in the middle of the day, it is a huge weight off their minds. We are all busy people. It is great that we did the evaluation last year and teachers in the schools were overwhelmingly in favour of expanding the programme. For schools that did not get it in this round, I will open it again later in the year so schools can apply for the next round. There are approximately 3,000 primary schools altogether. We will have 1,600 in April if they all take up the offer and we will work our way through the rest as quickly as possible. It was planned to be rolled out up to 2030. I want to speed that up because it is a good scheme and it is important we do it for the children who are going to school today.

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