Meals on Wheels should provide school lunches as suppliers withdraw from scheme - TD

Staff members Sinéad, Emily, Hannah, and Aisling in the IRD Duhallow Community Food Services cafe in Newmarket, North Cork. Having started out providing meals to just eight people in Boherbue, it now provides 850,000 meals a year, including to schools. See link at foot of this article. Picture: Larry Cummins

The Government has been urged to fund a pilot scheme that would use the Meals on Wheels network to deliver hot school meals to smaller schools that have seen their orders cancelled.

As reported by the  Irish Examiner earlier this week, thousands of children are now being left without a hot lunch because suppliers claim changes to the Government’s school meals programme make providing to small schools financially unviable.

More than 2,000 children are understood to be affected after several suppliers withdrew from the scheme. Tipperary-based The Lunch Bag is the largest provider of the scheme, and notified 82 small schools that it can no longer supply them.

Independent Ireland leader Michael Collins has called for Government to intervene to ensure that other measures are put in place to ensure the affected children are catered for.

The Cork South West TD suggested the Government should “urgently fund” a pilot scheme that would use the existing Meals on Wheels network to deliver hot food to small schools.

“The hot meals programme promised fairness, but instead it has unravelled into a scheme with more holes than help,” he said.

Meals on Wheels are already out on the road every single day, delivering to elderly people across rural Ireland. They are certified, professional, and up to the highest standards.

“With Government support, this service could also provide meals to schools on their routes. It would be one extra drop — stretching across generations, linking young and old, and making the best use of a service that already works.”

Mr Collins and Independent Ireland recently conducted a consultation with teachers and principals about the Government’s hot school meal scheme.

One Cork participant told the consultation that their school had signed up to the programme two years ago, but “have been unable to secure a company who will supply us as we are in rural West Cork with only 17 pupils”.

“To be honest, from what I’ve heard, it is a huge waste of money, and the amount of wasted food is disgraceful,” they said.

One parent in Dublin said their children in primary and secondary school had never been provided with a meal, despite the schools having Deis status.

Independent Ireland TD for Cork South-West, Michael Collins, said: 'With Government support, this service [Meals on Wheels] could also provide meals to schools on their routes.'  File picture: Karlis Dzjamko

“Is this some kind of postcode lottery system with regard to hot meals?” they asked.

One respondent in Roscommon said the “general consensus amongst staff is that the money being used to fund the hot meals could be put to better use”.

“For example, we are a school with 30 children in the autism classes and are seeing those children being left without external therapeutic services to their detriment,” they said. “Those children need regular on-site visits from speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, physios, behaviour therapists, etc.

There is a significant amount of waste daily with hot lunches not eaten, and they end up in the bin, especially with the junior end of the school. 

The hot school meals scheme was expected to be extended to all schools from September. However, this was delayed due to issues with procurement.

Earlier this week, the scheme was dealt a further blow as suppliers stopped providing to smaller schools.

The Lunch Bag stated that a directive outlining that no school staff member or student could assist with the distribution of meals meant that they could no longer provide the meals to smaller schools. 

It argued that the funding provided was too small to allow the company to hire additional staff.