Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Today, I will raise a local issue, something I tend not to do. It is so local that it involves my community in Killinarden. The reason I raise it today is that we have had little progress in trying to deal directly with the Department of Social Protection on the issue, which is the hot school meals programme. Killinarden is one of the largest, if not the largest, housing estates in Tallaght west with some of the highest rates of poverty. The local schools are Sacred Heart junior and senior schools, Cnoc Mhuire junior and senior schools and the Gaelscoil, Scoil Chaitlín Maude. They came together to work collaboratively to apply for the programme as a consortium for all the children, because different age groups go to the junior schools and the senior schools and they might be from the same families. The Department of Social Protection removed one school from the consortium and provided the hot school meals programme to all the other schools. This means somebody could have a child in junior school who does not receive a hot meal while the person's other children in the senior school do, or the person's next-door neighbour whose child goes to the Sacred Heart school does receive a meal and the person's child does not. The Department removed one small school from the consortium. It just picked it out for no apparent reason and decided not to provide the school with hot meals.

That does not make sense. We recognise that these are families who experience poverty and live in consistent poverty. There are many one-parent family households. The schools and the community need those meals, but for some reason this decision was made. The only answer we have received is that the Department can only give it to so many schools and so forth. There is no idea of looking at the demographics or geographics of that community or the implications for just one family household. It does not make any sense. One of the words used in the response is that it is a "lottery" system. It worried me that the inclusion officer would say it is a lottery system. If one is dealing with poverty and its impacts, and if one is assessing schools on the basis of need, it does not make sense that a lottery system would be used to determine how in-need a community is. One should look at the application, the statistics and why that community would require the support.

I do not usually bring local issues such as this before the Seanad, but we have tried a number of other avenues. I ask the Leader for her support and to communicate with the Department of Social Protection to try to create some leeway so we do not create further inequalities in a community that experiences inequality. Removing one junior school from that programme is creating a further inequality in that community.