Seán Ó Fearghaíl
Question:4. Deputy Seán Ó Fearghaíl asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection her plans to alleviate food poverty; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [17373/15]
View answerWednesday, 6 May 2015
Questions (4)
Oral answers (6 contributions)
It is frightening to think that in the Ireland of today 10% of the population is experiencing food poverty. A recent study by the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice acknowledged that after housing and child care costs, one of the biggest challenges facing the family budget is to provide food. We know that one in five children in Ireland go to bed hungry and one in six children go to school hungry, without having had their breakfast. Does the Tánaiste have a plan to address that particular challenge?
The Department of Social Protection’s primary role is to provide income supports to sustain an adequate standard of living and to prevent poverty. It is for that reason that the Government has protected primary weekly rates of welfare since it came into office, notwithstanding the economic difficulties. In 2013, welfare payments and other social transfers, excluding pensions, reduced the at-risk-of-poverty rate from 38.4% to 15.2%, thereby lifting almost a quarter of the population out of relative income poverty. Ireland is among the best performing EU member states in that regard.
The school meals programme provides funding towards the provision of food services to some 1,600 schools and organisations, benefiting more than 205,000 children. A total of €39 million has been provided for the scheme in 2015, which is an increase of €2 million on that provided in the previous year.
A new European initiative, the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived, FEAD, now supports the provision of food and basic consumer products to people considered to be most at risk. A total of almost €27 million in funding is available over the period to 2020, of which 65% is for food. I expect the programme will be operational during the third quarter of this year.
Under its social inclusion initiative funding schemes, the Department supports Healthy Food for All, a national charitable organisation which works to increase access to and availability of affordable healthy food by groups of people on a low income.
Does the Tánaiste accept that food poverty has a particularly negative effect on children? It affects their health, educational attainment and their behaviour in school. I welcome the increase in the budget for the school meals programme in the current year. That needs to be continued.
Does the Tánaiste also accept that there perhaps needs to be a restructuring of the school meals programme? As I understand it, at present approximately 14% of the funding goes to breakfast clubs with the balance of the funding being spent on lunches, but studies have clearly indicated that the best outcomes for children come from having a substantial breakfast made available to them at the start of the day. That is one of the things that is not happening because of the manner in which the school meals programme is organised.
Would the Minister agree that there must be an urgent restructuring of the system?
The Department spends €39 million per year on the school meals programme. I have been a strong supporter of the programme as well as the Healthy Food for All initiative, which is about all of us, including schoolchildren and their parents, learning about healthy food and how to eat healthily. One of the issues with food is that sometimes a great deal of money might be spent on it, but the food might not be as nutritious as it could be.
I am a strong supporter of the breakfast clubs, and I welcome the Deputy's remarks. However, much depends on the school. The breakfast clubs and the school meals programme are available to all schools designated as DEIS schools in urban or rural areas. Interestingly, not all of the schools apply. Over the last couple of years we have been in constant contact with the schools to advertise the fact that this is available.
The other issue relates to the number of children. This year we increased child benefit by €5 to €135 per month. If a family is on social welfare it would also get almost €30 per week per child. In other words, for a family relying on a social welfare income, there is, in effect, approximately €65 per week per child, not counting other payments the family may receive. However, I agree with the Deputy and I would like if more schools availed of the breakfast clubs, but that is a choice for the schools. Not all schools open early in the morning. I have been talking about this to my colleague, the Minister for Education and Skills. To get a breakfast club the school must facilitate being open half an hour or an hour earlier. We also employ people, through different programmes, to assist with the school meals programme and they do a fantastic job. I would be delighted if more school principals and boards of management were to avail of the scheme.
The lunches that are provided are quite good but if a child has left the house without eating properly, it has an impact in terms of energy if their first meal is somewhat later. I have visited many school meals programmes throughout the country. Principals are enormously sensitive to identifying children who might have left home without getting a proper breakfast.
I chair the board of management of a school which is not in DEIS but provides a breakfast service to the children. The Minister is missing my point. The meals programme is structured to incentivise schools to provide the lunch, because the greater subsidy is available for the lunch. There must be some reconfiguration of the system to incentivise the schools to provide the breakfast. It is the provision of the breakfast that is of greatest benefit to the children and ultimately to the operation of the school. I plead with the Minister to examine that critically, look at what is happening across the country, encourage principals and boards of management to make the transition from lunch to breakfast and ensure that the system is organised to make it expedient for them to provide the breakfast.
I am happy to look at that. However, in many cases, not every child in the school will want or need a breakfast because, for the most part, they will have eaten a good, nourishing breakfast at home with their family. The reason for the emphasis on lunch is that by lunchtime, when the children still have another couple of hours in school, they need food.
Perhaps we should agree to move to both breakfast and lunch being provided in school where appropriate. Not every child may require a breakfast - it varies - but the option should be there, particularly for those children who most need it. Other children might choose to join breakfast clubs. I have seen principals who have done this extremely well. If a school's starting time is 9 a.m., its principal is required to be on the premises to start the breakfast at approximately 8.30 a.m. The other reason I am an extremely strong advocate of breakfast clubs is that it is a very nice social time for the children to sit down, get their breakfast and have a chat with their friends before the start of the school day. Not all boards of management are in agreement. Certainly, I would like to move to a situation where both options are available. It should not be a case of one or the other. In a tight funding situation, we have prioritised funding for the school meals programmes. I anticipate being able to improve what is on offer. It requires the permission of the board and of the principal.