Jen Cummins
Dublin South-Central · Social Democrats · Ireland
“However, there is an advantage if their family can buy them one and they can continue their school work at home. It is not good enough to say that schools can make up their minds about that. The Department needs to actually decide and give guidance like it does for other things.”
“Circular 0032/2017 has been in existence for almost ten years and in most parts is not enforced. There is no point in issuing a circular if nothing is going to be done about it. I am delighted the Minister has said there will be a working group to review and hopefully strengthen that.”
“I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion. It is very timely. These are the summer months when parents start to think about how we will we stretch our finances to autumn, get everything that we need to ready and then still maybe take a holiday, organise summer camps, etc. The motion is, as stated, very timely.”
“I see it as an absolute disgrace that such a number of people need that support. I welcome that that funding and support is there for those families but I am still shocked that this affects 233,000 children, which is a lot of children, aged between two and 18. I think it goes up to 22 in some cases. There is a digital divide.”
“When parents were told, they had six weeks to pay but most people do not have such a flexible budget to allow them to pay the €160 or however much it is. When things are being reintroduced time needs to be factored in for that. There was an increase in the cost of school transport for families.”
“I will go through a few of the things that I think still present challenges. The capitation grant for schools was increased last year but has still not reached a level which will mean that schools are fully funded. It has not reached the level where it needs to be. In addition, it does not take into consideration the level of inflation.”
The complete record
Every one of 807 lines we hold for Jen Cummins, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 2 of 17.
“It is not a judgment on country by city or vice versa . We need to work together. In other countries where this used to happen, it has been banned. That is why we need to look at it now. Things evolve and it is an evolution of that. We cannot stay static just because it is tradition. I do not like that divide between city and country because it creates division, which is not helpful. As previous speakers have said, hares are recognised in Irish law as a protected wild species. It is beyond me as to why we would have a protected species and then round them up, keep them in captivity and put them out to be chased by dogs. It does not make any sense. We would not accept that for a horse, our pet or anything else, to round up something that is protected and then use this as a way of entertaining people.”
“I thank Deputy Murphy for bringing this Bill forward. It is so important. Hare coursing is called a blood sport. That is where we should start. In what world is that acceptable, a blood sport? Think of what that actually means. What previous contributors have said has really landed with me today. We need to look at anything that is called a blood sport and realise that maybe in 2026, we are a little bit outdated. We are constantly talking about improving the lives of animals in this country. I am a city TD, as everybody knows. However, I have very firm roots in the countryside. I have explained before my love of tractors and the countryside. I miss the time I spent as a child in the countryside. I caution that this should never be a divide. A conversation about this cannot be divided between city and country. We are all people.”
“She is a lone parent and has to pay fees on top of paying rent and trying to get her kids through things. It is a challenge. We need to be as supportive as we can. It is not just about those aged 17 and 18 going to college; it is also about the older person who decides to go back to college or go to college for the first time. They need to be supported as much as we can. Broadly, it may work for most, but it does not work for everyone, and we must focus on including everyone.”
“The Minister is right about students sleeping in their car whose parents earn over €100,000. While €100,000 is a huge amount of money, the difficulty and challenge are when there are several children in the family also in college or doing things. That puts pressure on family budgets. We have also spoken in this Chamber about students who are alienated from their parents but cannot access SUSI grants because their income is based on what their parents earn. We need to iron that out. While we are talking about a small number of students in this situation, we need to iron it out completely to have an education system inclusive of everyone. Of course, it is not just young people struggling with fees. Older people who decide to go back to college are also affected. It is a huge strain on them. I am aware of a mother who is under huge pressure.”
“They need time to figure out who they are and what they want to do and discover what the future might hold for them. However, if they are under massive pressure during this time, they will not be able to do that. That will cause students to leave third level education, which will affect their self-esteem and all the different parts of their life.”
“I know people were happy with the reduction. It is swings and roundabouts as to whether the total level went up or down, but it is what it is. No one in this House can deny the challenges students face. Of course, there are students who do not pay because of SUSI. I appreciate that the threshold for SUSI increased, but there are students stuck in the middle. This is the challenge. We have heard of students sleeping in cars or dropping out because they cannot afford it. Some students are working almost full-time jobs to get through their college course. This is not what we want. As I have said before in this House, the love of learning is why we want students to go to third level, whatever course they decide to do. Students who have just finished the leaving certificate or the leaving certificate applied have been under huge pressure.”
“The summer break is ahead. I am sure many leaving certificate students are relaxing on a beach somewhere. Others have got jobs and are planning the year ahead. They are trying to figure out what they are going to do next year, how they are going to do it, where they are going to live, etc. However, what they want to know the most is the level of fees next year and whether it will be reduced.”
“In today's Irish Independent we read of the devastating number of women, 1,872, who fled abuse and tried to get a refuse space but could not. The Istanbul Convention states that we should have 500 refuge spaces but we only have 172. Safe Ireland's report outlines that we do not have enough to support women who are fleeing. When a woman has made up her mind to flee abuse, it is the most dangerous time. We need to do more. We need an urgent debate in this House about this topic.”
“It will never ever wipe away the pain that those children, now adults, have endured, but it may do something to help, and it will perhaps be less traumatising and less retraumatising.”
“Maybe this is possible because maybe a really rich organisation is able to move its money around, and I am just naive. What I am not naive about is the fact that people who have been educated in this country and have been in institutions deserve better, and we have to try better. The Government needs to catch up with the rest of us with regard to empathy and a trauma-informed way of looking at things, because this is not it, and putting that delay on this Bill is a disgrace. I would like the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, to take that back to Government and ask Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and all the other people who make up the Government to please discuss it. We are now looking at a situation where there is a solution which will help people.”
“The Labour Party is giving an excellent solution here, yet the Government's new thing, and I say new as if I have been here for years when I have not, seems to be to put a delay on things. I ask the Government to please not do that. It is unfair to the victims, the survivors and those people who suffered in our schools. When education and health is outsourced to organisations, that does not mean the responsibility for it can be outsourced. The State has had to pay a significant amount of money in redress, and rightly so. The religious orders, the other organisations and other unincorporated bodies, of which there are so many that I will not be able to name them all, need to be able to pay back and should be paying back, but they are not, because they are smart and they are moving their money around.”
“I do not understand what the difference is between living there for five minutes or six months. It is a trauma that continues for the rest of their lives. How do you measure those things? When we stood in this Chamber, when Helen McEntee was Minister for Education, and discussed what would happen with regard to sexual abuse in schools in Ireland, so many people said that had to be a trauma-focused, survivor-focused way of approaching it. It needs to allow people to speak, not to speak, to find a space and to not be retraumatising, yet here we are again, having this conversation, and there will be a delay. The Government has said several times, on so many Bills over the last year, that the Opposition never comes up with any solutions and only criticises it.”
“To be able to deal with sexual abuse trauma and then have to navigate a system that is set against you is absolutely cruel and is totally avoidable. Going back to the survivors for a minute, it is utterly heartbreaking. I keep saying "heartbreaking". I am a mother. I have children. I keep thinking of how the survivors were failed, but we are continuing to fail them. We keep coming back in here, talking about it, proposing things and then delaying it. I do not understand why we are delaying it. Maybe that is how survivors feel. They do not understand why so many barriers and blockages have to be put in their way, when the State is saying it sees them, hears them and will do redress, but it will only do redress if they lived in the mother and baby homes for more than six months.”
“This is a State failure, but we cannot pass the buck to others. We need to ensure mechanisms of the State are able to reach into those orders and get behind the red tape. It is fixable. I suppose I am a little frustrated because if you think if there is a problem, you fix it. There is a solution here; Deputy Bacik is giving a very clear and easy solution. We are able to tackle these unincorporated bodies. I had somebody contact me by email - I am not going to give his name because I do not have permission - who told me he has to sue 120 Christian brothers. That is in the High Court. It is not acceptable to hide behind this. For people who maybe do not understand, trauma has a way of incorporating every part of your body - sorry for the pun there. It takes over your whole body and mind.”
“However, these are organisations that successfully hid paedophiles in every nook and cranny of every institution and educational building. They were able to hide them so well, and now they are hiding in every nook and cranny any piece of property, cash or resources they have so that they do not have to feed back into the redress system. That is their responsibility. Yes, it is the responsibility of the State, but it is the responsibility of the people who perpetrated these horrific crimes on children to pay for that. The "RTÉ Investigates" documentary reported that there were members of the Christian brothers organisation who were not only paedophiles, but were also responsible for setting up the structures and making sure the resources were not able to be used. That is something that came as a shock to many people.”
“To be very clear, these religious orders are still running schools. They are called something different; they are not called the Christian brothers but something else. They are still running schools, and have all these unincorporated bodies and resources. At the time of several redress schemes, the religious orders said they did not have the money to contribute as much to them. They did not have the money, yet over a 35-year period they sold 800 properties. They got rid of them; they had the money, so they were able to generate it. We were talking about dereliction earlier this week. The Department of education owns a huge amount of vacant properties that would have come originally through religious orders, so there are plenty of resources.”
“I am also absolutely certain this is not historic. I know we are talking about historic at present, but this is going on now. The reality is that they were alone as children. They were scared and vulnerable, but we do not seem to be able to understand that. When that person receives redress, that does not mean it wipes away the pain, the hurt and everything that happened to them as a child. Redress does not wipe that away. It is not an erasure, but a recognition that the wrongs that happened to that child were not and are not acceptable. It does not take away the pain, but it is a recognition. Going back for a moment, "RTÉ Investigates" had a very interesting documentary, which I am sure people have seen, that explained very clearly how the religious orders use these unincorporated bodies to hide their assets.”
“I thank Deputy Bacik and the Labour Party for this Bill. I welcome the visitors to the Public Gallery. I am sure it is not easy for them to listen to the back and forth on something that should be an easy and straightforward thing to do. The Social Democrats welcome this Bill. We are disappointed in the Government for the six-month delay. As has been said, perhaps some people do not have six months, and have waited a very long time for redress. As I have listened to this debate, it has struck me how many debates are had in this Chamber on this topic. I am sure previous speakers have said this already, but when people contact me to tell me what happened to them as a child, it is absolutely horrific to read the words, to hear people on the phone and to try to understand what a child experienced at the hands of an adult in this country.”
“These are people who are researchers and who are valuable members of our community. We need to reduce the use of this word. I appreciate the Minister of State is reading from a script. I have mentioned it in the House previously and I want to say again that we should talk about "people" and not "talent". They are talented but I ask that the two words are used differently.”
“The Minister of State briefly mentioned types of leave. It is very important this is embedded in the contract so they have the possibility of taking sick leave, annual leave or maternity leave. The future progression and careers of researchers afterwards can be precarious. It is very important to mention that when things are industry led or agency led, whether it is in the arts, humanities and social science or STEM, at all times this research has to be independent. Just because it is funded does not mean the research can be influenced by people looking for a particular outcome. Research has to have its independence. It needs to be verifiable and not just focused on only making more money. I have mentioned previously that I do not think we should be using the word "talent" in our discourse.”
“I thank the Minister of State for his response. I appreciate it. I am very happy to hear that international best practice will be applied in this situation. I know from my engagement with PhD researchers that Ireland is not on a par with other countries throughout Europe or internationally. There are challenges with regard to the stipends, although I know they have increased over the past while. There is also the issue of employee status. I am speaking about PhD researchers as distinct from doctoral students, which I was myself. I am not talking about somebody who is a student but somebody who is a researcher. I am talking about a role advertised by an institution that states it wants a PhD researcher. With regard to their employment status, if they do tutorials or other work that needs to be protected for them.”
“That is not consultation; that is just letting someone know. It is a concern that I also have. It is important when things are changing and evolving that people are brought along, not just left to the side and told a couple of weeks beforehand that this is what the changes are going to be. There needs to be a right to be able to challenge that. That is why the open letter has happened.”
“A lot of the time, when young people leave second level and go to third level, they do not know what they want to do, so a firm basis in general sciences, general arts or other more general degrees is beneficial for them to discover themselves. To bring that back to the level of research, we need to be able to look, from a social scientific point of view, at what our future world is going to bring to us, what we need to know and what we know now about what is going to happen in the future, so we can build schools, homes and all of those things. That comes from social science. It is not just statistical analysis from a STEM perspective. The fear of the Postgraduate Workers' Organisation, IFUT and others is that Research Ireland and the Department made these decisions and kind of let them know along the way how things were going to go.”
“I have stood in this Chamber several times to talk about what we need from a science perspective because I am also the spokesperson for further and higher education, research, innovation and science - the shortest title of any spokesperson role, I would say. That is not to say that it only has to be that way. We need to make sure that when the industry is funding and leading what we want, it does not take over the other things that are necessary as well. When people look at the arts and humanities, they think that they are just subjects that you do - they are nice but you will never get a job from that. I note there was a debate recently about getting rid of arts programmes, and I would argue absolutely against that.”
“That is the nub of the issue here. Research Ireland has a finite amount of money, and it can only fund a certain number of things, but value needs to be put on both STEM and the arts, humanities and social sciences. If we look at the background of this, I am bringing it forward because almost 2,000 academics from universities across the country wrote an open letter to The Irish Times expressing the concerns they have with regard to what Research Ireland's current direction appears to be, and that it is towards more industry-focused research, which they feel is undervaluing the arts, humanities and social sciences. Of course, it is important that we have research that is able to grow the economy and that looks to the technological innovations we will need to have in the future.”
“I wish to raise the issue of the growing concern in Ireland's academic community with regard to the future of funding for arts, humanities and social science research under the new Research Ireland strategy. Before getting into the details, I note that I come from an arts background. My primary degree was in history, sociology and English, my next was in sociology and I have a doctorate in education, so I am clearly a little biased on this. I really feel the value of the arts, social sciences and humanities in terms of how we are as a country and how we conduct ourselves. That is not to say that I am anti-STEM at all. To balance that off, my husband works in that field, and my son is now doing it in college, so I think we can have a balanced conversation. It is important that we are not pitting one thing against the other.”
“Even though there are protections in the employment equality Act 2015, the reality for so many teachers is that they do not feel they can be themselves when they apply for jobs, when they are in those jobs or when they are delivering the curriculum set out by the Department and the NCCA. The Children and Family Relationships Act did not include all children. I am thinking particularly of the families in my constituency who contacted me and who are looking for that legislation to be fully implemented. It is so important for those families. They love their children as much as everybody else and they need to be recognised like everybody else is.”
“Belong To has recently opened a space for young people in town to make sure they feel welcome, they can be who they are and they can be with people who will accept them for who they are. I commend Belong To and its youth workers on creating that space for those young people. Belong To has found that one in four people has been attacked physically because of their identity. I will talk about teachers since the Minister is here. The INTO's LGBTQ+ teachers group has said that about one in five teachers in primary schools is not out in their school because they know that it would not be accepted.”
“Why is Pride important and why do we march every year? I was contemplating these questions over the last while. For as long as people are being attacked for who they are, are not able to be who they are and are targeted for their sexuality or identity, we will need to continue marching. That is why. I look forward to Saturday. Verbal abuse of the LGBTQ+ community is a daily, casual occurrence. It is a chipping away of safety, security and belonging. An Garda Síochána said there has been a rise in hate crimes over the last number of years. Not all of these were aimed at LGBTQ+ people but sexual orientation and gender identity are among the monitored motivations.”
“This is an epidemic of massive proportions, not just in Ireland but throughout the world. However, we are responsible for here. I really want us to work together. Will the Taoiseach work with us?”
“I also want to raise the Women's Aid annual report for this year. It shows a 33% increase in domestic violence disclosures and a significant proportion of those - almost 5,000 - are children. A long time ago I worked in the UK with a domestic violence project. What I see is that it is just getting worse. I do not want to play politics with this. Every single person in this House has a responsibility to work together to make sure we increase the supports to women and increase the punishment for the people who are perpetrating these crimes. We were delighted, as Social Democrats, that Senator Patricia Stephenson's Bill went forward to support women and people who are escaping domestic violence. I refer to the free travel scheme. We were thankful to the Government for supporting that. We need to work together.”
“If we are spending State money on State buildings and they are defective, it is an utter waste of money and an utter disgrace. This is creating untold anxiety for parents, staff and the children in those buildings. This whole scenario showed a lack of oversight, regulation and accountability. Families have spent years campaigning for their experiences to even be understood and believed. The Government is quite slow on this. I would say people feel a little bit gaslit. I do not think that is good enough. I think it is a shame, when an expert tables a motion, that the Government comes with a countermotion. It is a waste. Why does the Government not just believe what is being said and why does it not listen and get this sorted? As my colleague said, cowboy builders have gone off, not a bother on them, and the State is left to pick it up.”
“As education spokesperson, I am aware that there are 16 schools in Donegal that we know of affected by this crisis, with seemingly a new report every week of it happening elsewhere throughout the country. If there are children in those schools who are living in a home that is affected by the defective blocks, then they go to school and it is the same situation, there is no let-up for that child. As my colleague said, this is affecting people's mental health. The foundations of their life are literally crumbling beneath them. If that is at home and at it is at school, it is utterly heartbreaking for those people. I am aware the Department of education has confirmed that it is engaging with the schools. I do not know if it engages with every single school because it did not give me that number.”
“I support this motion. I am thinking of the thousands of families across Ireland whose lives are absolutely devastated by the defective concrete blocks crisis. I pay tribute to Deputy Charles Ward for his relentless work on this issue. Since he came in through this door, he has gone at this issue every single week. He could not have worked harder on this. The people who elected him to Dáil Éireann must be very proud of the work he is doing, so well done and keep going. I have no doubt that the Deputy will keep going. I know he is trying to secure justice, accountability and full redress for the people who he represents in Donegal and throughout the country, so well done to him. I do not think this is just an issue in housing. It also has community-wide and education effects.”
“In my constituency, there are a number of children at risk of deportation. They are too young to have known anywhere else and they are going to be ripped from the communities in which they have friends, classmates and all the people who care for and love them. This time last year, a number of children from my constituency were deported before the end of the school year, which was very traumatic for everybody. This year, I do not know whether the deportations will happen during the school year. I asked last year that they not happen during the school year. What work has been done since last year by Tusla and the Department of justice to make sure children who are being deported are treated with the utmost respect and dignity and that both their human rights and their rights as children are protected?”
“There is a fine balance as to how we make sure that everybody gets exactly what is appropriate to them to make sure they are on an equal footing with everybody else. When I was visiting a school a very long time ago, I saw a lovely picture of children looking over a wall. You just saw their faces across the wall, but on the other side you saw children of different heights. Some were standing on a higher or lower ladder or stool, but they all looked the same from the other side of the wall. It was showing what equity is. Equity is to give people what they need in order for them to be on an equal footing with everybody else. That is not only for primary and secondary school but also for third level. Early intervention classes set children up to succeed in primary school.”
“We also need to make sure for any school that is being opened, a special school or special class, that the training is there for those staff members. Teachers who are newly qualified or who are very long in the system are telling me time and again that they did learn anything about this in college, yet they are expected to go in and work with the child when they have no idea how to manage or do that. It is not good enough. We are failing the teacher or SNA and we are failing the child. We need to make sure that the training and CPD is there for the best chance for everybody in the situation. I agree that it has to be rights-based and needs-based. It needs to be about fairness and equality, but also equity. We cannot give everybody the same because some people need more than others.”
“One of the challenges they have is the lack of time for planning. They do not just rock up on a Monday morning at 9 o'clock and decide what they are doing today. They have to have plans. That needs to be built in, particularly if they are supporting children with additional needs. It is about what needs to be done, when, what is the routine and who is doing what - all those things. That needs to be built in to the planning week, as does the overall view of how inclusive education is done in a school. It is the culture of a school and who manages it. When the principal is running around doing all the other things, who is the person who instils that culture in a school? The principal is that person but she or he cannot do everything. We need a way of making sure that culture is there in schools.”
“Those young people have left that school with their heads held so high, with absolute support, love and care. They are going to meet the world right where it is and will be able to do whatever they want in the future because of the care they got in that school. I know we want to have the local school being the inclusive school, but until that is an actual reality we cannot close those schools because those children will not get the same love and care in a school with 1,000 pupils. There is just no way they can. There is a balancing act. When we transition into the new system we would like to have, we need to make sure that until we are definitely able to deliver on that side, we do not put those children in jeopardy. Today in the education committee the teacher and SNA unions were in.”
“While I am talking about books, I cannot ever forget about the young person who came to the education committee and told us that he got his Braille books the week before he was doing the leaving certificate, even though they were ordered in fourth year. I just cannot get over that. There is a system that shows an absolute breakdown for a child, that they would not have their books for the two years of studying the leaving certificate. I have mentioned mild general learning disability schools so many times. I did not know they existed until I was a TD. Now I know. I have been at one and was at a beautiful graduation in Scoil Eoin in Crumlin last week. I was trying not to cry too much since it was not my children, but it was absolutely gorgeous.”
“That is fantastic but in the meantime, until that is a reality, we need to be safeguarding those reading classes and making sure that children have access to that. There are children who are going on to second level who have not managed to access or get through the primary school curriculum. They are not able to read it because they have not been given the skills to do that. We are using programmes like Reading Recovery, which is being struck off in other countries, and we are investing a quarter of a million euro or more in it. We need to look at structured literacy and how that happens, and why it is effective in the long term for children.”
“We need to challenge that in every aspect of our education system at primary, secondary and third level, so nobody feels they are not able to be valued and have a place in that. The systems in this world have to fit around people. People do not have to be jammed into a system that is wrong for them. That is so important, particularly for people with disabilities who already face so many challenges in other aspects of their lives. Over the course of being a TD, I have been struck by the different types of challenges that people have when they have a disability. For example, on reading, there are reading classes that are being closed, or are not open or are full, because they are not being invested in. The vision is to be inclusive so that the local school will be the inclusive school and children will just go to their local school.”
“If that is the case, how do we make sure a child does not continue in an education setting that ruins them as an individual? Separate to this, when I was a school completion co-ordinator, we had the iScoil programme. It is not for children with disabilities but for children who left school and were not in school for six months at a time. They would come to us broken, thinking they were stupid and thinking they were not able to learn anything. The system broke them because it did not understand them as individuals and their needs and rights. When they would come to us, we would have to build their confidence so they would know they are not stupid, and there is a place for them in this world and for every single person.”
“I would love to see the further and higher education committee, which I attend although I am not a member, looking at the situation as well. On education and children with disabilities, not a day goes by that somebody does not contact my office about the state of things. I just got off the phone with a mother where the school clearly does not want the child to be there. Deputy Boyd Barrett said to trust the schools but in this scenario I do not. This poor child has been ostracised. I am obviously not going to name them. There are examples of poor practice around the country because of lack of leadership and lack of challenges. We need to make sure that if this is the situation, it is called out. For the most part, schools are doing absolutely excellently. However, not every school is suitable for every single child.”
“I would love to see what comes out of our report and how they speak to one another. They are independent pieces of work but I have no doubt there will be so many things that are similar between them. The only difference is that ours will be for primary and secondary school and will not examine third level. That is the missing conversation that never happens in here. What happens for young people who go on to third level, whether to an apprenticeship or college or to any institution or course? The Disability Federation of Ireland has said that 25% of adults with disabilities have now completed third level in comparison to 32% of the general population. We are still not on a par. We need to ensure that tertiary education is as available as primary and secondary. It is not so easy. That conversation definitely needs to happen.”
“Congratulations to Deputy Quinlivan and everybody on the disability matters committee for this great document. I have read it. There is so much in it. It must have been a huge amount of work. It is very thorough. My colleague Deputy Liam Quaide is not able to speak today but he would love to have been able to do so. One of the things that struck me with this report is that in schools, education and in this place, we often silo things. The disability matters committee has done a wonderful report. We in the education and youth committee are down in committee room 4 most weeks, and we are looking at inclusive education. It is imperative that these two pieces of work meet each other and that we do not stay siloed. This is not about maths, Irish or English in school. It is serious and is about people's lives.”
“Has the Government got a handle on this, and will it be able to make sure that things are sorted out for the next academic year? Will the Government apologise to any child who does not have a summer provision this year because they are going to be at home when other children are having the time of their lives in the summer?”
“The summer provision programme has been very difficult this year. It used to not be difficult to implement but this year it has been particularly difficult. I have spoken with parents and principals who feel very disrespected. They have had to assume an extra burden this year, and the stress has really been really unacceptable. The issues include the short timeframe that the portal was opened. It was then reopened thanks to pressure from Members, including the Tánaiste. They are also upset about the business case model they have to put forward, the reduction in staffing and that the parents who did not get a school place are now not getting to get a home-based provision. Inclusive education has been an omnishambles this academic year.”
“It would ensure certain food types are offered on a rotating basis. The Bill would allow for the prohibition of certain foods as well as the inclusion of healthy drinks and the provision of vegetarian options, as well as dietary requirements. It would also provide for the enforcement of the food legislation through the Food Safety Authority of Ireland. It would amend the Education Act 1998 to insert the words "to promote a healthy life and healthy food environments for students" into section 9(d). That is a bit technical, but that is all right. At the heart of this Bill, it is about recognising that every single child in this country deserves to have access to nutritious food that supports their health, development and ability to learn. Children learn better when they are nourished. Habits for eating healthy food start at a young age.”
“Other people have been sent photographs of the hot schools meals. This is not acceptable. It is a waste of taxpayers’ money to have food served in schools that is not correct. It is also unfair on the children. This Bill would place nutritional standards on a statutory footing. At the moment, they are guidelines. This would bring them onto a statutory footing. It would require the Minister for Health, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, to introduce regulations to cover appropriate portion sizes, as we saw challenges with junior infants being served the same amount as a child in sixth class. Anyone with children knows, they eat a different amount of food. It would also address the quality, quantity and balance of the food, as well as appropriate portion sizes and methods of preparation.”