Ireland needs a minister for food to better serve our needs
Ballymaloe Cookery School co-founders Rory O'Connell and Darina Allen with students. Darina Allen has been calling for a minister for food for years. File picture: Denis Minihane
In recent weeks, I have found myself surrounded by some of the brightest and most committed minds in food. At Food on the Edge in Galway, I listened to international speakers discuss global food systems, policy, and the links between food, health, and climate. A week later, at the Samhain Food Festival in Kells, the focus turned homeward, centring on Ireland’s urgent need for a joined-up national food policy.
Both events made something painfully clear. We have a department for agriculture. We have health. We have education. We have social protection. Yet no one department takes full responsibility for what Irish people eat. The food we produce and export is world class. The food we serve our children and our patients often is not.
The hot school meals programme is a perfect example. The goal is admirable. No child in Ireland should sit through the school day hungry. But the pace of rollout has outstripped the systems needed to support it. Schools across the country are reporting food that children refuse to eat, waste levels that are through the roof, and suppliers struggling to meet standards. Food that should nourish is being binned.
Food policy specialist Ruth Hegarty has long warned that nutrition standards are meaningless without proper oversight. She asks, how can we teach our children to value good food if what is served to them daily is processed and anonymous?
Writer and educator Michelle Darmody argues that school meals should not only feed children, but teach them about where food comes from. When meals are trucked in and reheated, we lose that opportunity.
Hospitals tell the same story. If food is medicine, then what we serve our patients should support their recovery. Too often it does not. Across Ireland, hospital kitchens are constrained by procurement systems that reward the cheapest option. Ingredients that could heal are replaced with food that merely fills a gap. This is not the fault of the cooks. It is a failure of policy.
Darina Allen has been calling for a minister for food for years. She has said that Ireland will never reach its potential as a food nation until one person is responsible for seeing the system as a whole.
Food is not just an agricultural product. It is culture, health, education, environment, and community all rolled into one. Until we treat it that way at government level, we will keep making the same mistakes.
There is progress happening outside government. In Co Meath, Olivia Duff and her team at the Centre of Food Culture Ireland are creating something remarkable. They are mapping producers, educators, chefs, community groups, and policy advocates to build a living network of Ireland’s food actors. Their goal is to connect the dots between those who grow, cook, teach, and advocate, and to present a united front for change. It is the groundwork of what a real food policy could be built upon.
Closer to home, Cork Food Policy Council is showing how this can work locally. It brings together people from community groups, retail, agriculture, health, education, and local government to develop a sustainable and healthy food strategy for the region. The model is simple, but powerful: shared responsibility, open dialogue, and measurable goals. Imagine if every county in Ireland took the same approach. Local ownership would build regional resilience, and those local groups could feed into a national framework.
What is missing is co-ordination. At the moment, these brilliant projects and advocates are working in isolation. They are doing vital work, but they are not being joined together in a national plan. A minister for food could connect them, give them political backing, and ensure that Ireland’s food system finally serves the people it is meant to.
This is not something that can be achieved overnight. Building a fair, healthy, and sustainable food system will take time, patience, and collaboration. It will take the input of farmers, chefs, dietitians, educators, procurement officers, and policymakers. It will take leadership from people like Hegarty, Darmody, Duff, and Allen, who have already been doing the thinking. It will also take a willingness from government to treat food as a matter of national importance.
We have no shortage of expertise or goodwill. What we lack is accountability. At present, if a school principal wants to question the quality of meals being delivered, there is no clear place to turn. If a hospital dietitian wants to improve the food on offer, there is no one department that can make it happen. A minister for food would be the person who cannot look away.
Ireland’s reputation for food excellence is hard-earned. We celebrate our chefs, our producers, our restaurants, and our exports. It is time to bring that same pride and care into our public food system. The food we give to our children, our patients, and our communities should be a reflection of the best of who we are.
The groundwork has already begun. The will is there. Now what we need is leadership.
- Orla McAndrew is a Cork-based chef and writer working at the intersection of food, sustainability, and culture.
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