The start of a new school year is bringing with it a hot meal to an increasing number of primary school children as the State’s Hot School Meals Programme is now operating in almost 2,200 schools. The scheme first introduced to 30 schools in 2019 is now feeding 345,000 primary school children across the country.
The Government has pledged to fast track the programme to cover all primary schools in the country, ahead of the 2030 deadline.
Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys has said she intends to allocate the extra funding for those primary schools not yet covered by the programme in next month’s Budget.
However, there is huge disparity across the country in terms of those schools that have opted into the scheme.
The counties with the biggest uptake include Donegal, where 93% of primary schools are in receipt of hot meals, closely followed by Longford (92%), Wexford (90%), and Carlow (81%).
Those where the scheme is less popular include: Cork (57%), Meath (54%), Kildare (50%), and Sligo, where only 45% of primary schools have received funding.
Competitive process
Under the programme, each qualifying school is entitled to €3.20 per pupil for a hot meal, with the funding exclusive to the cost of food. The onus is on the school to source a supplier, after it engages in a competitive tendering process in line with Public Procurement guidelines.
Those schools that qualify for the scheme must ensure their supplier adheres to the nutritional standards for school meals and sample menus must be submitted as part of the application process.
Where a school is reapplying for funding, and has previously received more than €10,000 in Hot School Meals funding, a separate bank account must be used. Principals are also required to fill in income and expenditure forms as part of the overall application process – an additional administrative level for schools.
Some rural primary schools that have not yet qualified for the scheme have complained they are being penalised due to their remote locations making it difficult to secure suppliers.
Earlier this year Tipperary TD, Michael Lowry asked the Government to provide extra funding to small rural schools, who don’t have access to large suppliers of school meals, for the purposes of buying equipment and paying non-teaching staff to deliver the programme on site.
However, a response from the department issued to Irish Country Living said this was not possible.
“Where a school is eligible for funding under the Hot School Meals Programme and is unable to secure a hot meals supplier due to its facilities and space or location, they may reach out to local caterers or supermarkets,” a spokesperson said.
“If a school is still unsuccessful in securing a supplier, they should then try to source a local supplier that could instead provide a lunch with a drink as an alternative to a hot meal.
“The subject of school facilities and administration is a matter for the Department of Education.”
Mixed Views
Across the country, there are mixed views of the Hot School Meals Programme.
Many schools have lauded the scheme as a ‘godsend’ for parents and children alike. Wendy Long is principal of Scoil Naisiúnta, Domhnach Mór, Castlefinn, near Lifford in Co Donegal. The school, with 30 pupils, was one of those included in the pilot programme in 2019. After a rocky start, the Hot School Meals Programme is now running effectively.
“The Hot Schools Meals scheme is definitely a success here in our school as we now have a local supplier who is very accommodating,” she says.
“Our first supplier was great in the first year but then issues arose around the flexibility of meal choices, where the children had to decide in September what they wanted to eat for the entire school year which obviously was problematic.
“We then changed to a local supplier, McGlynn’s Restaurant in Castlefinn who have been very flexible and accommodating. Having the right supplier on board has been key and the scheme has been very manageable overall.
“We don’t have a lot of food waste as the children enjoy their meals, which our senior children from third to sixth class can pick themselves in class each week. The younger children’s dinners are chosen at home where their parents fill in a form each week, and it all works very well. My own children have come through the school since the scheme was introduced and it was a godsend not to have to figure out lunches every day while knowing they were getting a healthy, nutritious meal.”
However, not everyone has deemed the initiative a success. Some primary schools have opted out of the programme, including one rural school in the west of Ireland that has blamed the inflexibility of the initiative for its decision.
The principal, who did not wish for the school to be identified, says the lack of choice between hot and cold lunches was a main factor in the decision not to reapply for the scheme this year.
“We are a remote rural school and struggled initially to source a supplier, but when we got up and running it was fine at the start,” she says.
“During Covid, the scheme served cold lunches due to infection control and then when the pandemic was over it went back to the hot dinners.
“We would have preferred the option to choose between hot and cold depending on the time of year but that wasn’t available to us.
“We were faced with a large proportion of meals going untouched every day and we decided it wasn’t worth it to continue.
“We will look at it again next year but I would urge the Government to introduce some flexibility into the scheme. It’s very hard to convince a child to tuck into a hot curry when the sun is beaming outside and a sandwich and a piece of fruit would be more likely to be consumed.”
While the Hot School Meals Programme is prioritised for primary schools with DEIS status, in line with the National Policy Framework for Children and Young People, Better outcomes Brighter futures, there have been calls for DEIS secondary schools to be included in the scheme.
Keira O’Sullivan is principal of Coláiste Bríde Secondary School in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford. With 762 students, the all-girls school was granted DEIS status in 2022. The school has applied, unsuccessfully, to the Department of Social Protection for an increase to their school cold lunch provision funding, to allow it deliver hot meals to its students.
“The blanket extension to cover all primary schools is very hard to swallow,” she says.
“We have applied for the Hot School Meals Programme and been refused. We’ve appealed that decision as we had assumed that our DEIS status would qualify us for hot school meals.
“It would make a massive difference to the lives of our students, many of whom are coming to school hungry every day. The town of Enniscorthy is classified as being between very and extremely disadvantaged on Pobail’s Deprivation Index.
“How substantial is a sandwich, which is as nutritious as it can be with a €1.70 limit, for a child to get through a school day?
“It is heartbreaking to see some students taking two sandwiches, because they are that hungry. We have children who look into the lunch boxes at the end of the day to see if there are any sandwiches left, because that is the only food they are getting that day.”
Raw end of the deal
Keira says she feels her students are getting the raw end of the deal, and says she will continue to fight for funding to allow her to deliver hot meals in the school.
“I feel my students are hard done by as there are plenty of primary schools in very affluent parts of the country that don’t need this,” she says.
“Whereas we have a very big cohort of students who do. Attendance is being impacted when children are getting sick and those who do make it in to school can’t concentrate when they are hungry.”
The roll-out of the Hot School Meals Programme is one piece of the puzzle. The next question is: when children are being served these meals, what is the nutritional quality?
According to the Department of Social Protection, the schools themselves lead the process. Schools avail of the public funding and are free to choose a catering company to supply the lunches.“All schools who wish to avail of funding are responsible for choosing their supplier on the open market in a fair and transparent manner in accordance with public procurement rules and the primary relationship is between school and supplier,” the Department official says.
When it comes to choosing a supplier, there are many catering companies in Ireland offering these services; varying in size, from larger multinationals to small, family-owned businesses.
Larage scale operators
Looking at the larger scale, there are suppliers such as Glanmore Foods, based in Blanchardstown, Dublin. Acquired by multinational catering company Compass Group in 2023, Glanmore Foods services 400 schools nationwide; delivering hot and cold meals each day.
Deirdre O’Neill is managing director of Glanmore Foods. She says, “Every supplier we use must complete our vendor assurance process to become an approved Glanmore supplier,” adding, “Robust procedures are in place for traceability, non-conforming products and product recall. We maintain 100% traceability on all foods produced, with regular audits ensuring swift ingredient traceability in under one hour.”
Glanmore Foods lists The Apple Farm, Keelings, Dole, Tirlán and Horgans of Mitchelstown among their suppliers. They provide each school with a Moduline regeneration oven for reheating meals on-site once they are delivered.
“Students have the flexibility to modify their lunch choices at their convenience, allowing for frequent changes,” Deirdre says. “Meals are packed in lined, reusable baskets, and each child gets the lunch of their choice, clearly labelled, in a lidded dish with cutlery, both of which are compostable. After lunch, any waste goes in the Glanmore Foods compost bin on-site.”
Glanmore Foods employs an in-house nutritionist, who oversees menu development with their chefs to ensure healthy eating guidelines are met. “Variety and choice are crucial for kids. We like to mix things up, helping children develop a love of all foods from an early age. Our smooth beef bolognaise and super gooey mac ‘n’ cheese are hot meal favourites.”
Small producers
On the other end of the spectrum, there are small, community-focused suppliers. In Limerick, St Munchin’s Community Centre has been providing two local primary schools with hot lunches since the pilot scheme first launched in 2019. Operating as a social enterprise, they also offer a breakfast club for students, run a meals-on-wheels programme for seniors and have an on-site community café.
The chefs in the community centre take a holistic approach to encourage students to try new foods and there is flexibility in their offering. Community centre manager Linda Ledger says this takes time, but it’s important to allow students to learn about food and nutrition at their own pace.
“Every child is different,” she says. “Our chef uses an array of vegetables in each dish, but she blanches them all off and they go into one sauce which we use in everything. One school might want every type of vegetable in their shepherd’s pie, while the other school wouldn’t want any, so at least this way we know the veggies are hidden in the sauce. You have to ask yourself: what will it take for this child to eat? You don’t know what anyone’s background is or what foods a child has grown up with. This is all about inclusion.
“I love the kids,” she adds, laughing. “They’ll tell you straight out, ‘Your sauce is rotten!’ Which leads us to ask, ‘OK, what can we do to make it better?’”
Even though there has been an expansion in the hot lunch programme, St Munchin’s continues to service just the two schools they started with. Linda says this is a quality control measure which ensures they continue to put the children’s nutritional and social needs first.
“If we take on more schools, we won’t be able to do what we do,” she says. “We like to see the kids each morning at breakfast club. We like encouraging them with new foods, but it’s more than that – through these meal programmes they are learning socialisation, hand-eye coordination, they are learning about ‘tidy up time’ and how to ask for their own food.”
These two examples show both the large and small operators involved in the Hot School Meals Programme and their approach to nutrition. However, finding a supplier is not always easy or straightforward, especially for rural schools. While schools are able to choose the catering company, some have reported that only one or two come back to them when they send in queries, which drastically limits options. “We reached out to many catering companies when we were first brought in the programme last year,” one rural DEIS school principal, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells Irish Country Living. “But only two got back to us. Initially, we were thrilled with the quality of the meals, but this year the quality seems to have gone downhill.”
Lack of choice
Transparency around the sourcing of ingredients is also a key concern for some schools. According to the tender documentation under the Schools Procurement’s Unit, school meal suppliers are responsible for operating policies “which progressively address environmental considerations such as waste and packaging” and they must “provide fresh, seasonal nutritious produce, fruits, vegetables, grains, and other foods that may be new to students”.
“The menu is to include a range of locally sourced items along with a greater use of sustainable food, for example, in season produce, high animal welfare standards on meat, free range eggs, marine conservation certified fish, fair trade produce, produce from a certified organic source,” it states. These are nutritional and environmental guidelines to which all catering companies must adhere.
The reality though is quite different. Irish Country Living observed ingredient lists provided to parents and on some supplier’s websites. Traceability can only be described as vague; simply listing items like “pasta sauce” and “dairy spread” along with allergens. None contained any clear indication of ingredient origin.
One parent, whose child’s school is in the tendering process, says they are dealing with a supplier who gives no indication or guarantee that the food is Irish. “There were no suppliers listed on the documents provided, no mention of Bord Bia or the NDC,” she says. “There is a huge opportunity to support Irish suppliers here but if they are, they aren’t telling us about it.”
It’s impossible to discuss the Hot School Meals Programme without taking into account the issues that surround the public procurement process. If you have ever eaten in a hospital, college campus or Government building, the food you consumed was publicly procured. This is a tendering process for anyone wishing to provide goods and services to public institutions and is designed to show transparency in terms of who receives these large contracts.
The problem with the public procurement process is that larger companies are in a better position to win contracts. They understand the complex tendering process, can easily provide consistent services at scale and have systems in place for adhering to Government guidelines.
Where the whole system is based on cost and efficiencies, it risks forcing the tendering companies into buying practices that focus on low cost but not necessarily the highest quality ingredients. Often large companies are buying in bulk which small companies cannot compete with.
In many situations, larger-scale catering companies are the ones supplying small, rural schools. This is because they have the infrastructure needed to logistically supply meals across the country. They can deliver them safely while also providing large ovens in which the food can be re-heated and supply waste collection.
Small, local suppliers are generally reluctant to get involved in the public procurement process because the system has historically been restrictive and difficult to navigate. This is especially true when they are up against larger companies with entire teams dedicated to HACCP, health and safety and the tendering process.
However, these are often the companies which offer a more tailor-led and flexible solution with a better understanding of the issues and taste preferences of the individual school community.
Procurement issues aside, when we consider hot school lunches we should really be considering the end users: the children. While the majority of catering companies use consulting nutritionists to develop recipes, some parents feel these recipes are not developed with the average child’s palate in mind. What’s the point of a meal being nutritious if it is left uneaten?
Linda Ledger from St Munchin’s Community Centre says if school lunches are proving unsuccessful, it’s due to a lack of understanding. “A lot of the kids won’t eat the lunches because the Government is saying ‘It needs to be this,’ and if you have a child who has never had a stew before, you can’t just say, ‘Eat that.’ Let’s holistically think about this. Education is the key and, at the end of the day, it’s about the children: what they’ll eat and how they’ll eat it.”
If we are to truly consider the issues around the Hot School Meals Programme, we need to look further back in the process – beyond catering companies and supplier lists. If the Government wants to succeed on two fronts, providing nutritious hot meals for children while also supporting small suppliers and local producers, it has the power to transform its public procurement process. It could positively discriminate towards small local companies and in doing so, support the local community in more ways than one.