School Meals Programme
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-26
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Dara Calleary (FF), Mayo

By funding and appointing a dietician rather than listening to all sorts of opinions, we will obtain an informed opinion. The dietician’s first job was to look at a paper-based exercise and look at the menus. They are now getting out to schools with colleagues from the Department of social protection. They are also developing an auditing tool to allow the process to be more efficient and will allow us to get the nutritional standards. With all that information I will engage. I am happy enough that we are on the right path but there can be unintended consequences. On high salt and sugar content, we have had substantial feedback from parents whose children will only eat that for a range of reasons.
I want to try to get as much in as possible so that we do not add to the distress of children by making what we think might be good decisions but which add to it. I will come back later to the point raised by Deputy O'Reilly around portion size.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-26