School Meals Programme: Statements
Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-30
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Pauline Tully (SF), Cultural and Educational Panel

I am a member of the Committee on Education and Youth, as are Senators Nelson Murray and Scahill. We have done a comprehensive bit of work on the hot school meals programme. We started approximately one year ago. Many witnesses have attended the committee. We have visited schools. Senator Scahill and I visited St. Ultan's integrated school in Ballyfermot. I have to say it is an excellent school all round. Additional supports have been brought in at the school to support not just the children but the parents. Senator Boyhan talked about a principal who would bring in the parents. The school in Ballyfermot brought parents into the facility. They could pop in in the morning, get a breakfast, with a cup of tea or coffee, and get help with form filling or anything like that. It was good. The school has a canteen on site so the food is cooked. There is a rota. It is a big school with many students and there is a rota. The younger ones go in first. The cutlery and dishes are there and everything is washed. There is no waste in that format. We tried the food and it was lovely. We saw the menu choices and everything else. We found when we were doing our study that where there were canteen facilities on site, it worked best. One of the recommendation in the committee report was that a canteen should be considered for inclusion in all new builds, going forward.
Talking to other schools, there was a mixed response. Most of it is positive and most people agree that hot school meals programme is positive. It is a large investment by the State so you want to get it as right as possible, bearing in mind that nothing will ever be perfect. Where there is good availability of local suppliers, it works well. In some of the primary schools to which I have talked, the supplier is local and can deliver the hot food at lunchtime for the children to eat immediately. However, other schools have said that they do not know about that and there is a lot of waste because the food is delivered in the morning. It is hot when it is delivered. The schools have facilities to heat it, but when you have hot food in a container with a lid on it and it is allowed to cool, condensation forms and the food, including the pasta, gets soggy. One supplier came to talk to the children and they gave her the feedback about the food being soggy sometimes. However, the supplier did not seem to take it on board. It was not an easy issue to resolve because the food has to be delivered at that time for different reasons. However, it is about ensuring the food is hot when delivered to the school, where possible. It should be prepared on site, where possible, or delivered hot, where possible, or, as a last resort, heated up.
I am delighted with and welcome the cold meal option. I know of another school with DEIS status that was getting meals delivered before the hot school meals programme. They were cold meals comprising sandwiches, fruit and milk. The school reported that it was good and it preferred that option to the hot school meals. There is a mix there. It is about considering everything.
Some of the principals who fed back to us said that the tendering process for the supplier was tedious and put a lot of work on them. They had to interview the different providers and give feedback to those who were not successful, if they required it, and so on. Perhaps it is a matter for the Minister for education to address but those principals think we could come up with a better way of ensuring the burden of additional bureaucracy does not fall on their shoulders.
The quality of the food was mixed, but a lot of it was good. Everybody wants to limit processed food. We want nutritional and tasty food. That the portion size was the same for all of the children, regardless of whether they were in sixth class or junior infants, came up again and again. That is an issue the Minister is going to address, which is welcome. There is also a need to ensure diversity in the food being supplied. We have students from different backgrounds. We have students who are vegan or vegetarian. We also have children with additional needs who have sensory issues around certain types of foods. We must try to include everybody.
Food waste came up quite a bit. It was not just about the food waste itself. It was about the waste of the material the food is delivered in if dishes are not available in the school. That is not an option for a lot of schools because they do not have the facilities for washing or even storing plates and cutlery. Even if it is all recyclable, and it is, there is still an awful lot of production and waste to deal with every day. That is an issue that needs to be considered.
Not-for-profit local providers are the best option if the food cannot be produced on site. It means fresher food and supporting local organisations that employ local people. They are not there to make a profit. Therefore, they can charge less for the food and make it more nutritious. They do not have the pressure of trying to make a profit all the time. I taught in a secondary DEIS school for many years.
Because we had DEIS status, meals were provided on site but students and staff could provide the meals and they produced lovely food there. If the home school liaison officer or any member of staff became aware that a student was hungry or from a deprived background and did not have a meal, they could recommend that child receive a meal but nobody else knew the child was not paying.
The unfortunate part about that is someone could have been missed so it would have just been that we happened to find out about it one day. I recall sitting with a first year class one day and they were called out early for their lunch because there was a very popular lunch on the menu that day. There were huge numbers of pupils. Therefore, they let the first years go out of the class a bit earlier and maybe five of six students stayed behind. I asked them if they all had their own lunches and whether that was why they were not going and they all said "Yes, miss". Then one of the girls said to me that she had not eaten since 5 o'clock the day before. I immediately recommended that she be given a meal and she was from then on but it was just due to a chance that I asked the question and she answered. I might never have asked the question or it may never have come to anyone's attention. I even asked the home school liaison officer if she had visited this family and she said she had and everything seemed fine, but it was a notified visit. If it is a notified visit, the home school liaison officer will not walk in on what is happening. There was an addiction issue in the household.
The school meals programme, whether it is hot or cold, is a great idea because it makes sure every child has a meal, there is no stigma attached and we are not fearful of missing anyone. It is a large investment on behalf of the State so we want to make sure the food provided will be eaten by most people and that there is the minimum amount of waste.
It has not been mentioned yet, but the holiday hunger programme is really important too when children are out of school, especially over the summer because it is two months or maybe more and then there is Christmas and everything else. I know it is working well in some areas but it is not available everywhere so we need to come up with a way that every child that is possibly hungry can have access to food over holiday periods. Dealing with food poverty is very important and this is a very important part of that but it cannot be the only part. It is often found that giving cash to families that need it is the most important way so they can ensure they have sufficient money to feed themselves.

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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