School Meals Programme
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-15
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Dessie Ellis (SF), Dublin North-West

I thank the Minister of State. We are constantly being told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. To any child in homelessness or in a vulnerable circumstance, it is essential that the morning start with a proper breakfast. It is a credit to St. Malachy's that it has managed to provide a proper breakfast for some of its pupils. Funding for a snack club is simply not good enough. It is totally inadequate. There is also no funding available to run a breakfast club or for staff to run it. St. Malachy's does fund raising and also uses money left over from the snack club to provide some pupils with a breakfast.
Funding should be allocated on a more general basis as being for the provision of meals for pupils. The position should be that the schools know best. They are the ones that should allocate the funding as they see fit. It should not be the case that there is some diktat on how funding should be spent on meals in schools such as St. Malachy's. I urge the Government to reconsider the Department's attitude with regard to how money is spent and to provide the necessary funding for breakfast clubs for this DEIS school. The Government constantly talks about DEIS schools. We know the work being done and how important these schools are, but to provide a meal that consists of just a small snack or similar is not good enough. There are a lot of very vulnerable kids in these schools, including in this school. We really need dedicated funding for our breakfast club and for those children to go to school in order that they can learn and are not going there hungry. That is so important. I therefore urge the Government to look at the way this money and this funding are being provided.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-15