Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)

2 o’clock

I thank the Minister for his response. The reason I raised this issue is I have a concern about the nutritional quality. Parents cannot control the quality of the food, although they can select from the menu of options. Concerns have been raised about the traceability of food and labelling such as "pasta sauce". At the end of the day, the companies that are involved in this have a loyalty to their profits and business. I am talking to the Minister as he is wearing both of his hats. He looks after part of the school meals programme but also has responsibility for community employment, Tús, the rural social scheme and other schemes. That would be very beneficial. Will he consider not-for-profit provision? We saw what happened in England with turkey twizzlers and all that kind of stuff. We do not want to go down that road. My fear is we are part way down it already and we need to pull it back. The best way to do that is to remove the profit motive from that programme.

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