Suppliers are pulling out of the hot school meals scheme because of the cost-of-living crisis, Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys has said.
Ms Humphreys said she had ordered an urgent review of the scheme after a number of suppliers warned that the current €2.90 offered to cover the cost of a hot meal was not enough with food prices soaring. The admission comes amid reports of suppliers pulling out of agreements with schools around the country.
Despite the Government pledging an additional €20 million for the scheme in September’s budget, it has emerged that there has been an underspend on the programme over the past year, which TDs have blamed on suppliers pulling out.
Oireachtas social protection committee chairman Denis Naughten TD on Wednesday said the rates offered by the Government were “inadequate” to meet the costs of making meals.
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“As a result of that, a number of providers have pulled out of [the scheme] because it doesn’t make financial sense for them,” he said.
Mr Naughten told the Minister the scheme was “vital”, needed to be “enhanced” and that she must “investigate” the circumstances causing suppliers to exit the programme.
Fianna Fáil TD Éamon Ó Cuív said: “We have a major problem with suppliers – and there are not too many suppliers in it – not being able to provide a dinner.”
He said the rate of €2.90 for a meal was “not an awful lot of money” given it was aimed at “growing youngsters that should be eating you out of house and home”.
Ms Humphreys told the committee she wanted to “ramp up” the scheme as a “hot school meal for a child in the middle of day is so beneficial for them”. She initially suggested that the underspend could be down to demand not being “quite as high as what we thought it would be” but later said she was “also conscious that the cost of food has gone up”.
“There have been a number of people on to me saying they can’t deliver meals at these prices,” she said.
Ms Humphreys said an evaluation of the scheme, including the rates payable per dinner, would attempt to establish if there was “anything better we can do”.
“As far as I’m concerned we should be increasing [the numbers on the scheme] all the time,” she added. “My aim is that every child in the country, regardless of background, should get that dinner in the middle of the day. I can’t do it all at once. We are looking at the evaluation, we will have it by the end of the year.”
Sinn Féin’s Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire told Taoiseach Micheál Martin in the Dáil last week that 1,000 children in Connemara recently “lost their school meals because the provider ceased to provide them, citing financial pressures”.
He said a school in Cork city, St Maries of the Isle, which is attended by some children from homeless shelters, had also “lost their school meal because the providers have pulled out”.
“It is clear that financial pressures from the cost-of-living crisis are undermining the delivery of the school meals programme,” he said. “Obviously, this is no one’s intention but it is a very serious problem.”
In response, Mr Martin said he would discuss the matter with Ms Humphreys and Minister for Education Norma Foley to try to find a solution.
In response to a recent parliamentary question, Ms Humphreys said the school meals programme currently helped feed 260,000 children in 1,700 schools and other organisations. A budget of €68.1 million was provided for the scheme last year and this increased to €91.6 million in Budget 2023.
