'Our children need to be fed right': This North Cork organisation cooks 3,000 meals every day

Duhallow Community Food Services provides a made-from-scratch meals service to local schools, feeding 2,987 children every day

Linda O’Connor, manager of food operations at Duhallow Community Food Services, oversees the busy kitchen as thousands of school meals are prepared and packed at the organisation’s base in Duhallow. The service caters for 30 schools daily. Picture: Chani Anderson

“When it’s government-funded, we’re all paying for it. These are our children, they’re the next generation, and they need to be fed right,” says Duhallow Community Food Services manager Linda O’Connor.

In 2025, the Government extended the hot school meals scheme, which had started as a pilot scheme in 2019 with just 36 schools, to all primary schools in the country.