Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Independent)
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I thank the Minister of State for taking this question. It is a follow-up question, as I have raised this issue previously. I point to the ambition to see every school student with a hot school meal, which has to be commended. I agree that we need to ensure that our children are given all of the support that is necessary to get them the best results and access to education. Equally, it is important that children get the same experience and feel they are the same as their peers. However, there are issues with the roll-out of the hot school meals programme. In County Clare, I have come across two schools which are worthy of the hot school meals programme, Ennistymon Community School and St. Anne's School in Ennis.

Ennistymon Community School is a newly amalgamated secondary school, where three different schools came together as one. It did not go through a smooth transition by any standards and has faced many challenges. One main challenge is that the amalgamation brought together one DEIS band school and two non-DEIS band schools. This resulted in hot school meals eligibility for just one school. I raised this with the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, and pointed out it would be unfair to roll out the scheme for only some of the more than 700 students. The Minister was quick to respond and rectify the matter, and ensured that all students in the school received a hot school meal for this school year. However, that does not resolve the matter in its entirety.

My understanding is that this September the hot school meals programme will only be approved for those students who attended the DEIS band secondary school and that will be in place until first-year students who started last year finish their secondary school cycle, after which the hot school meals eligibility will cease. I pointed out to the Minister that this was not a workable arrangement as it will see some students receive a hot school meal while most will not. I am concerned for all of the students involved. I remember my secondary school years. Students should all be treated the same. I do not want children to feel like they are different, and that is important.

With universal roll-outs, the Department still needs to be effective in how it responds to complex cases. This is a complex case. I note the Minister recently requested that the school engage with the Department and I have relayed that to it. However, this is a matter for the Ministers, Deputies Humphreys and Foley, to tackle together in order to ensure a fair path forward.

The second complex case is St. Anne's School in Ennis, a special needs school. The school has a cook who knows all of the children and their dietary needs. The cook ensures that each meal prepared for each child is tailored to their needs and wants, which makes sense and benefits everyone involved. Children get the food they want and unnecessary waste is combated. It provides the best value-for-money for the Department. The school wants to keep its arrangement in place. If I was part of that school community I would too.

Accommodation can and should be made to ensure that the most practical option is provided for each individual school, in particular special schools. The hot school meals programme does not allow a school to pay the wages of the cook, but if a school went with a company to provide the service it would cover all charges, from packaging to waste disposal to the delivery of the meals. However, the hot school meals programme does not currently recognise that special schools should receive accommodations. I request that the Minister, along with officials, re-examine the programme. By all means extend it, but they should take the time to appreciate that some schools will need additional support and flexibility.

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. The objective of the school meals programme is to provide regular nutritious food to children to support them in taking full advantage of the education provided to them. The programme is an important component of policy to encourage school attendance and extra educational achievement. Following a significant expansion in recent years, some 2,600 schools, covering 443,000 children, are now eligible for funding for a range of meal options under the school meals programme. The hot school meals programme started in 2019, with a pilot scheme of 30 schools, and has now grown to include 2,000 schools. It is my ambition and that of the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, that every child born today will have a hot school meal by the time they start primary school.

St. Anne's School in Ennis, County Clare, has received funding under the school meals programme since the 2016-17 school year and has been funded for hot school meals since the 2023-24 school year. The school is currently in receipt of funding of €82,000 for hot school meals in respect of 143 children, at the daily rate of €3.20 per child per day. Funding under this programme is solely for food and is made available on the basis of a set price per meal per child per day. It is not possible for the funding to be used to recruit a cook or for the school to negotiate other arrangements locally. All schools which wish to avail of funding are responsible for choosing their school meals supplier on the open market in a fair and transparent manner, in accordance with public procurement rules, and the primary relationship is between the school and supplier.

Responsibility for sourcing the meals is a matter for each school, but in order to secure funding they must first agree to apply the standards set out by signing a service level agreement which clearly sets out the school's responsibilities and obligations in terms of nutrition standards for school meals which were developed by a working group, led by the health and well-being programme in the Department of Health, in consultation with Safefood and the healthy eating and active living programme in the HSE.

It is each school's responsibility to source a supplier that can meet the dietary requirements of all their pupils. Each school is required to provide a menu choice of at least two different meals per day and, where required, provide a vegetarian or vegan option and an option that caters for students' religious and cultural dietary requirements and medical conditions. The food provided for those with allergies or conditions must comply with these standards. Guidance on allergies such as coeliac disease and gluten intolerance is available from Safefood.

The hot school meals programme is specifically designed to cater for the dietary needs of children and the Department provides funding directly to schools, which are then required to procure the provision of the food in compliance with public procurement rules, the relevant hazard analysis, critical control point food safety regulations and nutrition standards for school meals.

The Minister and I are keen to build on the great success of the scheme to date. Those primary schools that have not opted into the scheme have been contacted again and many are now coming on board. This is a very positive step and I hope we can continue to build on the scheme in the years ahead.

The question, as framed by the Deputy, just referred to St. Anne's special school. As a result, I do not have any additional information Ennistymon. I am aware that the Minister and the Department showed flexibility last year regarding the situation in Ennistymon. Without knowing more of the detail and background, all I can say is that I will take the Deputy's request directly to the Minister. I can follow up a bit more in my supplementary reply.

Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Independent)
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I appreciate that the Minister of State will take that information back in respect of St. Anne's and the flexibility for special schools I am looking for. The response that has been provided is rigid and somewhat disappointing. Again, it is a one-size-fits-all approach that will not be workable in some schools, especially rural schools which do not have the options or opportunities that schools in urban areas may have.

I want to see each child in both of the schools that I raised thriving, getting the best and equal opportunity to education. The staff and the principal, Rose-Marie, in St. Anne's do fantastic work and they are doing all that they can. They have been finding the funding to pay this cook to keep her in place. This is vital for the children and our focus should be on them.

We also had a briefing from the principals of primary schools last week. They said they were at breaking point and crisis levels of hardship. They are losing principals as they are drowning in chaos with having to be a jack of all trades. They have difficulties with losing grants, increased costs and SET allocation hours. One principal gave an example of a contract for the hot school meals programme costing €160,000, which is more than the school received for all the other costs it is covering. One school conducted a survey and found that there was no desire within the school community for hot school meals. While that surprised me, the point made was that they are firefighting every day and that they need solutions to their existing problems and bills. They need these matters addressed first in some cases. Those particular schools believe that the funding is not being allocated in the right places.

I urge the Minister to sit down with the Minister for Education to ensure that an holistic view is taken and that flexibility is provided under the hot school meals programme to allow the Department to respond to the needs of those schools, especially in complex cases. There is a job of work to be done where it has already been rolled out. We do not want children in one school setting treated in any way differently from their peers. We also do not want to continue to see a special school using its funding mechanisms to self-fund their cook, leaving their children without the vital and important therapy they need. This has to be resolved, and I have made the Minister aware of these cases.

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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I take the opportunity to acknowledge the child-centred approach of St. Anne's special school. I read up about the school in advance, and it is to be commended on how it does things and works with children. I could read out all the statistics outlining the scale of the hot school meals programme. It is very large-scale programme and we want to cover all schools eventually. The nature of that means that it works in a particular way. It does not fund the staff and if we were to get into that realm, it would become a very different thing and would become more complex. At its core, is a very different policy direction from what the Deputy is proposing.

We provide funding to schools around the country to go to the market and get suppliers to bring food in. In many ways, that has developed because of how schools are set up in Ireland as opposed to the setup in other countries. Our schools tend not to have kitchens or cooking facilities. In order to reach as many people as possible, the hot school meals programme has developed in the way that it has. In many respects, it has been quite effective. As the Deputy acknowledged and as I mentioned, there is flexibility within that model. We have facilitated Ennistymon within the overall model. The Deputy is talking about a very different model, which would not have allowed us to reach as many schools, had we done it that way.

Notwithstanding that, what St. Anne's wants to do is commendable. As to how that might be pursued, I am not so sure. I know from my work in the Department of Rural and Community Development that it funds staff through the community services programme, through community organisations which are involved in the provision of meals to communities - I am not so sure about schools. Certainly, in community settings, that happens. I am not saying that is doable here but perhaps there is another way of facilitating what they want to do, which is ultimately the best for the children as well. I am open to ideas and a discussion on how that might be done. However, I cannot see how the model we have in the Department can fit what the Deputy is proposing, at least in this school year. It would require a significant change in policy direction to facilitate that.