School meals: 'Holiday hunger' payments to continue until March 2023

So-called "holiday hunger" payments for more than 100,000 children are to continue until March 2023.

The payments of £27 each fortnight are made to families during school holidays in place of free school meals.

A long term plan to continue the payments until 2025 has not yet been agreed due to the collapse of the Stormont Executive.

But the education minister is to spend £5.5m to continue the scheme until the end of the 2022/23 financial year.

This means the school holiday food grant - as the payments are called - will be paid to the families of pupils entitled to free school meals over the Halloween break, this year's Christmas holidays and the February half-term school holidays in 2023.

In a statement, the minister Michelle McIlveen said that she hoped the move would "provide some reassurance to many parents on low incomes and help alleviate some of the pressure they are experiencing".

"I am aware of the financial pressures that school holidays can have for parents on low incomes, especially during the current cost-of-living crisis we are experiencing," she said.

"This payment will help to ensure that around 100,000 of our children and young people can continue to access healthy, nutritious food, at a time when many families are already financially vulnerable."

"I hope confirmation of this continued payment will provide some reassurance to many parents on low incomes and help alleviate some of the pressure they are experiencing."

Over 102,000 children from almost 58,000 families received the school holiday food grant to help with the cost of providing meals during the 2022 summer holidays.

But payment of the grant during those holidays had previously been in doubt until the last minute due of the lack of an executive.

Some schools in Northern Ireland have already decided to offer more pupils free meals in response to rises in the cost of living.

But they have to meet many of the costs of that from their own budgets or from money they raise themselves.

In Wales, all nursery and primary school pupils are set to receive free school meals by 2024 under government plans, and there have been calls to extend provision in Northern Ireland.

The Department of Education (DE) in Northern Ireland is currently reviewing the eligibility criteria for free school meals.

However, in a separate response to an assembly question from the Alliance MLA Connie Egan Ms McIlveen said that her department was facing "a very significant overspend of up £370m."

This was mainly as a result of "inescapable or pre-committed pressures" of £530m in 2022/23.

The education budget is one of Stormont's biggest at well over £2bn.

But Ms McIlveen said that DE was "extremely restricted" in its ability to make savings.

"Whilst work is ongoing to identify programmes of spend that could be scaled back or stopped, this will be very limited; and obviously any reduction in spend would invariably require cuts to essential frontline services that support the most vulnerable within our society, as well as risking breaching statutory obligations," she said.

The Finance Minister Conor Murphy recently warned that Executive Departments were facing a £660m overspend unless action was taken.

Any overspend would likely be deducted from next year's block grant, putting Stormont departments under further budgetary pressures.

The Education Authority has previously also warned that it is facing a potential budget deficit of £200m in this financial year.