£17.6m a year for free meals duringholidays would ease pressure: MLA

New data compiled by the End Child Poverty campaign shows 5,989 (26.4 %) children in Foyle were living in poverty after housing costs in 2018/19.

Sinn Féin MLA Karen Mullan said the figures were not a surprise.

“Child poverty is not just a result of COVID,” she said. “Coming from the community and voluntary sector and working in that role I’ve always provided programmes, as many of the groups do in the city, such as breakfast clubs during the summer, lunches and other community food initiatives throughout the year, focusing on pressure points, particularly around Christmas. You were acutely aware of the needs of children and young people and their families and the pressures that were there,” she said.

In order to help lessen the burden for hard-pressed families Ms. Mullan is calling on the Department of Education to provide school meal payments during all holidays throughout the year.

“They have costed out the full payment for the full year for all holidays and it would be £17.6m. So that’s a step forward. They recognise that it’s an issue. They haven’t got the money but they will now go to the Department of Finance,” she said.

The Sinn Féin education spokesperson is also asking the department to fund the provision of free sanitary products in all schools in order to end period poverty and further reduce hardship.

She explained: “Many of our schools have been leading the way doing it themselves which is absolutely brilliant and we need that across the board. They’ve costed that for the first year at half-a-million pounds.”

Ms. Mullan believes childhood poverty and food poverty have worsened as a result of the health and economic crisis.

“Some reports we have got around COVID in certain areas of the city over the summer suggest it certainly hasn’t gone down. I’d definitely say it has gone up a bit,” she said.

And with real wages and income failing to keep pace with the rising prices of household goods intervention is urgently needed, she says.

“You have increasing, really high prices in terms of the food in supermarkets and that’s not being matched by an income coming into the family. Many people have been furloughed and have lost their jobs and still have to be able to provide for their families. It’s been particularly difficult,” she said.