School Meals Programme
Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-24
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Linda Nelson Murray (FG), Industrial and Commercial Panel

I thank the Minister of State for being here. I love the saying that perfection is the enemy of the good. Nothing could be clearer when it comes to the hot school meals. The Minister of State and I both know that we are feeding 550,000 children across 3,200 schools and the amount of money we spend on it is €300 million. The allocation in the budget to make sure that every child gets a chance of a hot school meal is absolutely crucial. It comes under criticism and it does need to change. However, this week we have made those changes happen with more changes to come. It leads me on to talking about the children during the summer, Christmas and Easter holidays.
Two weeks ago, I was in a school in my county, Meath. I had a conversation with the principal about different aspects of the school. He pointed out to me that many children in the school are absolutely starving. As Irish people, we recognise that our parents were feeders. People coming into a house got a cup of tea and a slice of cake. In my house there were plenty of potatoes on the plate; we were very lucky. As a nation, we are feeders. To think that in 2026 we have children starving in school is really sad.
The particular school I am talking about does not get the holiday hunger programme. The holiday hunger programme needs to be rolled out to more schools and more children. This programme provides nutritious meals to children and young people at risk of educational disadvantage during the summer holidays. The pilot was introduced in 2025 with €1.3 million in funding to provide meals to children during these holidays. The programme has supported over 42,000 children across 500 schools which is excellent. It has only been in place for the last two years. Last year, we only found out in June that this programme was going to be extended into the summer of last year. It was fantastic but we were quite late learning about it.
This scheme supports those with the most educational disadvantage with one in five children experiencing food poverty during the summer holidays. I do not think it is fair that we need to wait until June 2027 to hear if we have the programme. We need to know now. Families need to know now. Schools need to know now if we are doing the programme next summer. The budget should allocate more money to the programme so it can reach more schools and more children. Although schools do not open during the Christmas and Easter holidays, we need to do something. We need to come up with some way of feeding children. The children who are in school are the same children who are hungry during the Christmas and Easter holidays.
I regularly use the statistics from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, whose representatives have appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education and Youth. Some 112,000 people came to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul for food assistance. In our towns and villages, we know the number of Christmas hampers that people are donating. We see them in our supermarkets and local clubs are giving them to families who desperately need them. However, the Government needs to do its bit to help.
I strongly feel that in this budget, we need to put money aside to feed children who are hungry during all the school holiday times and to ensure the holiday hunger programme reaches more schools next summer.

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Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:50+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-24