School Meals Programme: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-30 ============================================================ Linda Nelson Murray (FG), Industrial and Commercial Panel I thank the Minister for coming here to discuss the hot school meals programme. I thank him and his team, particularly Mr. Craig Dwyer in his Department, for being so proactive and engaging. It really makes a big difference to us as Senators to be able to get a call back from a Department within minutes or an hour. I imagine we will be changing the name from the "hot school meals programme" to the "school meals programme" with all the changes that the Department is going to make. Similar to Senator Rabbitte and others, I completely believe in the hot school meals programme. It is one of the most important investments that we have made in our children. We should be proud of how far this Government has brought the programme in a very short space of time. We talk about how it was in 30 schools only eight years ago and is now in 3,200. That is an extraordinary expansion in a very short amount of time. Behind every statistic is a child sitting down at lunchtime knowing that they are going to get a meal. I spoke to a principal two weeks ago who said that the children in the school were absolutely starving. Last year, 112,000 people went to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul for food assistance. That is how important this scheme is. I always try to use a bit of my own life in politics. I recall the nuns coming into the class when I was in school about 45 years ago. They would come in and ask who did not have a lunch that day, and the hands went up. It separated them from the children who had a lunch. They got a carton of milk and a hot cross bun, but it made everyone feel a little bit different. Sometimes, they would ask who was hungry and the hands would go up. Sometimes, if it was your birthday, the nuns would give you one of those hot cross buns, which was lovely. I remember it so vividly, but I also remember the children who put their hands up. Today, no child needs to put their hand up. They have an automatic right to a meal if they are in a primary school and if their school has opted into the programme. For many children, that meal is welcome. For many families, it is a significant saving. It is money that can be used elsewhere. My life has changed in the mornings not having to get lunches ready, but for some children, it is an absolute essential. I acknowledge the work that has been done by the Minister, the Government, the Department, schools, principals, teachers, staff and the suppliers who have helped to build this programme. I wish to encourage any school that is listening here today that has not opted-in to this programme to give it a real chance because it is a good thing for students. I acknowledge the positive changes that are now being made because this is exactly what good policy should do. It is what working together should do. Earlier this year, I put out a survey on the hot school meals programme following many people's comments on a post that I made. I received 8,000 responses. I visited and chatted to some distributors, called to some schools and listened to my own children, who get the meals. The joint Oireachtas committee on education also produced a report following many witnesses coming in to discuss hot school meals. The Minister got an unbelievable response to his survey and the work carried out within schools. I do not think anyone could actively say that we have not listened to people. This is a brilliant example of when we introduce a programme that we listen to the people using it, examine the evidence, identify what is not working as well as what is working, and then improve it. That is exactly what my report and the Minister's report sought to do. The message I heard was not to get rid of the hot school meals. The message was to keep them but make them better. That is the important distinction. Parents overwhelmingly recognised the value of the scheme, but they wanted their children to eat the food. There is no point in having a meal that is nutritiously perfect on paper if a child does not eat it. I remember a guy in the joint Oireachtas committee on education saying that perfection was the enemy of good. This really relates to this scheme. My survey found that 78% of respondents said that their children did not enjoy the variety of food, citing taste and presentation, and 80% said that children would be more likely to eat a fresh cold lunch than a hot school meal. Those figures should not be ignored and the Minister has not ignored them. However, neither should we ignore the very positive evidence. The Department's own nutrition review found a wide variety of meals and good availability of nutrition and balanced options. It found that 85% of children were ordering meals on average across the classes audited. Teachers were broadly positive about the nutritional value and the quality of meals. The answer is not to choose between nutrition and enjoyment. We need both. That brings us to the changes being proposed. I especially welcome the move towards age-appropriate portion sizes. It never made sense to me for a child in junior infants to get the same portion as a child in sixth class. The Department's review identified exactly this issue, as did my survey, and it is recommending clear instructions for suppliers to provide different-sized meals for different age groups. That is welcome. I also welcome the recommendation to improve fruit and vegetable content and vegan options. Importantly, the Department has recommended that schools be given flexibility on a hot or cold lunch from September 2027. That is something for which I specifically called, as did the Minister, and choice matters. Not every child wants a hot meal every day. A fresh sandwich, fruit, salad or soup can be perfectly good options. We should not confuse the word "hot" with the word "healthy" or the word "cold" with the word "unhealthy". It is important to remember that what matters is what is actually in the container and whether the child eats it. Another recommendation is to offer different menus for children in special schools or special education classes. I am delighted with that. However, there are still some areas where we need to go further. The first relates to special dietary requirements. Senator Rabbitte mentioned those with coeliac disease. A universal school meals programme should be genuinely inclusive. The second is food waste, which was mentioned. The Department's own review found meals were uneaten 18.9% of the time, on average, although that fell to 11% when absences were taken into account. However, that is still too much food going into bins. It is too much money going into bins. I would like us to measure food waste properly, school by school and supplier by supplier. Is it 100% of the lunch? Is it 75% of the lunch? Is it half of the lunch? The changes to portion sizes will make a big difference to the waste, but my report showed that 80% of parents who send in a lunch have not opted out of the hot school meals scheme. We need to encourage parents. If they are not going to avail of the scheme, they should opt out. We should encourage suppliers to encourage parents to opt out of the scheme if they are not using it. If a child is sick, and I know this through first-hand experience with my own kids, you cannot cancel the meal for that day. You have to give 48 hours' notice if you are cancelling the meal. A balanced approach is required between highly nutritious food and food that is actually eaten. Removing the high salt, sugar and fat content has to be a good thing, but if the food tastes totally different from the food the child gets at home, it should be considered. I am not advocating for bad food or a high salt intake, but we must take a balanced approach. Some examples on the new guidelines suggest not adding oil or butter to potatoes, rice or pasta, not adding salt to the water when cooking rice or pasta and not putting in bacon, so the famous pasta carbonara that everyone loves is going to change. The guidelines suggest no sausages, which has been really popular, even though sausages were covered in seaweed in many instances. The guidelines also suggest no tinned tuna. We eat a lot of tuna in our homes but it will not be allowed. All chicken curries will have to be served with brown and not white rice. Although this all sounds fabulous, it is very different from what children eat at home. We need to balance this out. We need to look at the time available for children to eat. It is not in the Minister's remit, but I will be talking that to the Minister for education to see can something be done. I would like to look at local and community-based food provision, particularly for small rural schools where the current model can be difficult to make economically viable, as in the places that have been mentioned. We also want to consider how to roll out the scheme in secondary schools. We now have an opportunity to move from a programme that has been rolled out quickly to a programme that is refined, evidence-based, child-centred and genuinely world class. My message today is certainly a positive one. I ask the Minister not to stop or pull back. I know he is not going to. I ask him not to allow legitimate questions about quality, nutrition or waste to undermine the fundamental principle of feeding children in school. Instead, let us listen, as we have, let us measure, as we have, and let us improve, as the Minister absolutely is doing. Let us give children nutritious food that they want to eat because the success of the hot school meals programme should be measured by a simple question: did that child sit down today at lunchtime, receive a nutritious meal, enjoy it, eat it and leave the desk ready to learn? That is the standard we should now aim for and I believe we can achieve it. --- 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