School Meals Programme: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-30 ============================================================ Victor Boyhan (IND), Agricultural Panel I welcome the Minister and thank him and his team for coming here. I acknowledge the very important work that is the school hot meals scheme. As I was coming up the stairs to the House, I was reminded of a great Kerrywoman, who was the principal of a school in north County Dublin. She asked me to come into the school. This school had been through great difficulties. It was under the patronage of the Catholic Diocese of Dublin and was eventually divided into two schools because the numbers were so large. It was before there were ever any DEIS designations. She told me that what she could achieve was a yearning for learning and for people to come to school feeling secure and safe. I walked around the school with the principal and she asked me to ask one of the kids a question, which I did. I think I must have picked the boldest and most brazen little kid in the school. She had blonde curly hair, and she first asked me, "Mister, are you Ms McGrath's boyfriend?", and everyone laughed. I then asked her about the importance of school and what she liked most about the school. She said she liked walking over from the flats to the school because Ms McGrath gave her mam and all mams that came there a mug of coffee and a cigarette. It was most unconventional, but remember that this was a Kerrywoman who had fought well with the diocese, the bishop and the Department of education. She was one of the first non-teaching principals in Ireland. She said that she had moved out of the designated office in the hall because she could not see the point in her sitting in the office. She allowed that to house a coffee machine for parents to go to because she wanted to build relationships with the parents. She believed that if she could build relationships with the parents, she could build relationships with the children. From that, she discovered that many of the parents could not read or write. There were numeracy and literacy problems. She realised that she needed to engage, but then she was not getting the same uptake, so she introduced sandwiches after school and suddenly parents of children were coming and children were staying back and eating sandwiches. That is my first experience of that sort of social interconnection between family and school. I believe in the importance of food. I believe in the symbolism of breaking bread around people's tables and bringing people together. It works. I wish to turn to two of the last sentences in the Minister's speech. He said: The success of the hot school meals scheme should not be measured solely by the number of meals served but also by the positive impact it has on children's health, well-being and educational outcomes. The reports confirm that the scheme is succeeding on a significant scale. The first is the key lines. I 100% agree with the Minister, in that it is about the welfare of our children. Going back to the same school, when asked of some children what was wrong with them when they were sent to the principal later, it was consistently that they were hungry. One does not have to be in a DEIS school to see it - one could be in the best schools in south or north county Dublin or, indeed, in Donegal or Cork - but there are children who are presenting to school without uniforms or school bags, without having the opportunity of having a bath for three or four days, and without food. Not only are they hungry, but they are also thirsty. That is the reality of it for so many people. This is important. If there is a high percentage of waste, it is not satisfactory. That is a concern. This is a good programme. I acknowledge the Minister's predecessor, Heather Humphreys. When I first was talking about this, she asked me to come over to her office one day and she was on fire with enthusiasm and excitement about this. She ran with this, as did her officials. She was very proud of it. I acknowledge the very significant role that she played. She is gone out of politics, but this was one thing that she was passionate about, as I know the Minister is too. The issue of absenteeism in our schools and how that is connected to waste raises a bigger issue, not about the waste but about absenteeism. I note the Government's campaign on the radio and television on why children are absent from school. That is a bigger issue for another day and another debate. Hopefully, there is cross-collaboration between the Minister and the Department of education because bells have to be ringing if children are not presenting themselves to school. There are issues and problems. However, this is not about condemning anyone. It is about putting the necessary supports in place to address why children in this State are not attending education and enhancing their skills and, eventually, life potential. When we look at the whole school meals programme, we have to put it into context. There will be difficulties, but we know that the school meals programme supports approximately 682,000 children. The scheme supports the largest catering operation in Ireland with up to 3.4 million meals provided each week. Of course, there are going to be slip-ups and problems on the side, but this is a fantastic operation. This has gone way beyond what we could have possibly dreamed of. The school meals programme is funded by the Minister's Department. I know he is absolutely committed, and his officials are equally committed, with a budget of €286 million in 2026. Wow. These are huge figures, a huge number of meals and a huge commitment. One of the great things about our debate today is that we are putting this out into the public domain. A lot of people do not know the vastness of this operation. We will never know or ever be able to measure the absolute success, but if one is putting food in children, one is reducing expenditure in the family home. It is making them as happy and content as possible. One is giving them the potential or at least assisting them with that wonderful thing - yearning and learning. If that is all one can do as a teacher, that is a wonderful achievement. I congratulate the Minister and his Department. As someone who sits on the agricultural panel here, I am always conscious of the importance of meals, vegetables, fruit, salads and whole grain foods and, where possible, of them being Irish. It is important. I said yesterday in the Seanad that we were importing over €2 billion in value of fruit and vegetables into a country that can grow broccoli, turnips, cabbage and cauliflower most of the year round. With supports, cloches and various technologies around energy, we could do even better for most of the year. However, that is for another day. Well done to the Minister. I ask him to continue to drive it. There will be imperfections, setbacks and problems. The numbers are enormous and we will never be able to measure the impact, but from everyone I have talked to - I am sure it is the same for everyone else in this House - it is an exceptionally positive initiative and is going in a way that it is targeted because it is going to the children and the people who matter. I wish the Minister and his Department well as they go out and tweak and fine-tune this important food programme in our schools. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-09-30/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-30