Thousands of families in Northern Ireland are set to miss out on free school meal entitlement over the summer months after the Department of Education confirmed no funding is yet in place to allow the scheme to continue as promised.
nd the DUP have been accused of allowing children to be ‘collateral damage’ following the decision not to nominate a speaker or a Deputy First Minister in the new NI Assembly following last week’s elections.
Almost 100,000 children were to benefit from the scheme, which would have seen payments made directly into bank accounts to enable parents to provide meals.
Agreement is needed from the Stormont Executive to allow the scheme to continue, with £22m in funding required annually.
Around 98,000 children are currently eligible for free school meals.
The Department said any continuation of the scheme depends on the “necessary funding being made available” despite the Executive agreeing in November 2020 to pay for free school meals for eligible children during school holidays.
Families have been receiving payments of £27 per child every fortnight, in lieu of school meals during holidays.
But according to the Department of Education, that funding only covered “school holiday periods, including mid-term breaks between Christmas 2020 and Easter 2022”.
SDLP Education spokesperson Daniel McCrossan MLA has accused the DUP of allowing children to become “collateral damage to their reckless strategy of collapsing Stormont”. The West Tyrone MLA has now as called on parents and carers to contact DUP MLAs to express their frustration at the cynical decision to put party politics ahead of the needs of children and hard-pressed families.
“It is outrageous that children across Northern Ireland will be left to go hungry during school holidays because resource has not yet been allocated to the free school meal payment scheme to provide hard-pressed families with vital money to get food on the table,” he said.
“It is not good enough that DUP MLAs walked into Stormont last week, signed the register to take their salaries, but are happy to let 98,000 children go hungry this summer while they continue to play political games. I understand that the protocol is important to Jeffrey Donaldson, but it cannot be more important than the wellbeing of thousands of children across all of our communities. They cannot become collateral damage to this DUP scheme.
“The SDLP has proposed expanding the free school meal payment scheme to ensure that every child gets a hot meal every day at home and at school, not just during school holidays. The intransigence of the DUP cannot continue and I would urge parents and carers to make their feelings on this important issue known.”
Earlier this year, a senior departmental official said that executive agreement was needed to extend funding for the holiday food payments beyond Easter 2022.
In the absence of an executive, Education Minister Michelle McIlveen, who continues to hold the position despite the lack of a functioning Assembly, may be able to write to other ministers to get their agreement to fund the scheme before school summer holidays begin at the end of June.
