If you are a politician, then few things show how much you care about the welfare of your constituents and your children like the phrase “every child should have access to a hot, nutritious, free school meal”.
It’s what those in the trade call “a statement of universal appeal”. Even if there exists, out there, the voter who sincerely believes that children shouldn’t have access to hot nutritious meals, that voter is not going to speak up for fear of being seen as, well, a monster.
As such, every politician agrees it is a good idea. Every parent agrees too, in principle. Every commentator backs the idea, and the Government rolls it out, as they did in Ireland back in 2019, with costs accumulating every year.
In this great cause, the Irish Government will spend €288million in 2026, delivering free school meals daily to 3,200 schools and 550,000 Irish Children. It is immensely popular. It is also, according to multiple people I have spoken to with knowledge of the process, one of the most gargantuan wastes of public money on an annual basis in the history of the state.
Why do I say that? Well, consider the experience of the School Principal who told me privately that she estimates that only about 30% of the meals delivered are eaten on any given day. That a majority of the children either don’t like the food, or their parents prefer to send them in with a packed lunch, or that the meals are less “hot” than they are “lukewarm”. The uneaten meals are then disposed of, but only after the taxpayer has paid.
Or consider the email sent out to parents by a school on the east coast this week, which announced that a contractor had finally been sourced to supply the meals, and that the school was now advertising (on behalf of the contractor) for “operatives to work in the school to facilitate the distribution of hot school meals to the classes”. Yes, that’s a real job in Ireland now – the “hot school meal operative” who hands out the food to the kids. What is this, James Bond? This operative will not, however, have any role in ensuring that the meals are actually eaten. Presumably “dinner lady” is not politically correct.
Or there’s the evidence already detailed by Julianne Corr over at the Sunday Times last May, of multiple complaints about the scheme:
“According to documents released under the freedom of information law, at least 12 government TDs and MEPs have passed on complaints to Dara Calleary, the social protection minister.
Among those to raise concerns are Simon Harris, the tanaiste; Darragh O’Brien, the transport minister; James Browne, the housing minister; and Regina Doherty, a Fine Gael MEP. The issues mentioned include poor food quality, excessive use of ultra-processed ingredients, a lack of nutritious options, food waste and the exclusion of children with special dietary needs. It is claimed that some schools serve pizza, chips and chicken goujons up to five days a week.”
Or you could sample this reddit thread of parents talking about the scheme. Selected quotes:
“Started off ok, my kids were eating but seems to have really dropped off in a very short space of time.”
“Ours started off horrible and stayed horrible. Nothing fresh or tasty. We’ve opted out until it improves. My kid gets a healthier lunchbox than the slop they serve in school.”
“My kid has a dietary condition that isn’t catered for, so we can’t avail of it.”
The meals are, of course, almost universally served as “ready meals”, coming individually packed, meaning that the amount of packaging and waste involved is enormous. And there is no publicly available data on how much of the food is actually eaten, though that Principal I spoke to was not the only teacher to estimate that the levels of waste and uneaten meals are enormous.
The idea of ensuring that children have access to hot food is not, on the face of it, a bad one. But then we have the way it has been done: Individual catering companies getting lucrative contracts to supply ready-meals to schools, rather than schools being given a budget to set up and operate their own kitchens or canteens where a varied menu could be delivered and actual hot food cooked. That would likely be more expensive, but with less waste over time. It is, after all, how hot school meals have been delivered throughout history.
And of course the oversight of the programme is poor because this is all subjective: What can the government actually do to verify that the quality of the meals is good? Something can be nutritious, but unappealing, or vice versa. The quality of food is often in the eye – or the tastebuds – of the beholder. What we do know is that this scheme is eye-wateringly expensive, and that a great many families are choosing not to avail of it.
So how much of our money is being spent every day to cook food that is thrown out? We do not know, and there are no publicly available figures. But it might be a profitable line of enquiry for some politician who wants to make a name for themselves.