Richard O'Donoghue: School Meals, Attendance and Building Delivery

Okay, so I have another one or two questions myself. Martin, you just mentioned there a second ago that when you're looking at getting school meals and best value for money, it surely would be best value for money for quality foods rather than best value for money because we see a lot of the schools at the moment, there's a lot of franchising going on now with people saying that they'll franchise and there's one company could be delivering food to 10 or 20 schools. If a school was able to provide the quality food themselves in a locality where number one it might actually give employment, number two it's local knowledge within the people that are actually delivering the food to the schools rather than going out to a franchise system where we've seen when you look at the data on it is when the meals will be provided locally within an area where they could be provided, there was less complaints than when it went out to franchising which gives me a concern on the quality of foods being going under getting in your own words where best value for money does not mean best quality foods. So if you look at the context of sequencing, if food can be provided for schools within areas that they're able to provide it at reasonable costs rather than going out to franchising and going out looking for best value for money which actually can actually bring it down and if you look at the complaints issue across the country where that came forward in the last number of years where people are coming in franchising and they were providing for 10 schools and the amount of complaints about the food and the quality of food, would that be concerning for you or is it something that you could work with with particular schools that if they can actually provide themselves within reasonable costs? The policy here in the first instance is the Department of Social Protection so what we've been doing over the last while over the last 18 months or so is working very closely with them as part of an interdepartmental working group with a number of colleagues from the HSE, from the Department of Health, Food Safety Authority, the Health and Safety Authority and colleagues in planning and building to try to I suppose set out the best possible scenarios that we can to try to problem solve where there are issues presenting and it's very important to note there's now 3,000 primary schools that are eligible for it and there are different issues and challenges presenting in different areas what we've done over the last while as a department we've provided for a procurement documentation with a very robust contract for each of the schools and try to support the schools in terms of procuring that wherever the service might come from to ensure it meets that minimum standard we have more work to do I mean the Education and Youth Committee met quite recently and they produced the reports we actually consider today and that we've been working with colleagues across the various departments and agencies over the last while to see how we might be able to enhance this further I suppose the scale of it is very very significant I think the spend is about 280 million and I think we'll be a number of years working through this to get this to the best possible outcomes that we can get because I think it's really important in terms of getting the value for money in terms of I suppose getting children to attend school there are some some issues and challenges and concerns with attendance at times and Cliona may be able to speak to that and I think this is an important initiative around that as well as addressing other areas of challenge and societal issues that might be there it has been good but we would acknowledge that there is work to do but we're very keen to work with this and work with the interdepartmental working group to resolve as many of the problems as we possibly can yeah to echo what martin said um school attendance is obviously something we've put a huge amount of emphasis on um we're seeing um a slight uptick um post-covid I suppose uh attendance was very very challenging we saw significant decreases in school attendance and we put significant time effort and investment into supporting schools to increase um increase their attendance through drives through various initiatives and now through a structured support program run by the the two education support service tests called on shop which is working um it's it has been working over the last the school year um with 60 schools and it's now rolling out to another 200 plus schools and we're seeing the results of that now um but I think martin's to martin's point we are seeing that attendance and school meals that you know there is a connection between the two things also yeah okay uh hubert i have a question for you know is based on construction background myself and construction on my life from the point of delivery of school projects um from the point of view of the inflation cost and all the rest of it and delivery on budget on time are you looking at a project of design build so it's the responsibility then goes back to the contractor for the design build so it's on budget on time where we don't have something like what the likes of the children's hospital which is going to want to be little budget so how do you control that from a design build from school projects yourselves okay a couple of things uh we use the standard forms of public works contract the children's hospital would have been used a variation or different form so just as well just for that clarity and things like that the second thing is like we've we'd have a strong focus in terms of our governance and cost control mechanisms and procedures and we'd have various stages of our process and managing all of that and we do a strong suite of uh sort of design team procedures uh in relation to to managing that um in terms of just given the scale of the school estate the scale of the school building program uh we i suppose have a variety of delivery mechanisms design and build is one of those it's a we we regard it as very significant very positive and we typically have that for the new school buildings greenfield sites or brownfield sites it works pretty clean and those uh the large-scale projects and we would have made a conscious decision in the last few years to bring in the tier one contractors and have a focus on them as part of our design and build frameworks and what you get with that is tier one contractors who are able to deliver large campus projects at scale uh in parallel with other projects and things like that so uh beyond that then we'd have a variety of procurement frameworks and traditionally the employer-led design which we regard as a very good solid construction delivery method for us um we would traditionally they would have been procured on a school by school basis and things like that but as part of our reform and efficiency measures across the plan and building unit um we would have put in place a contractor's framework there and that'll be a new initiative there and we think that'll be very positive very good smaller projects hubert you put in for the likes of modular bills but there's also a um so it's to me it's a right way of doing things yeah uh because you have a design you have a system that works you have a certain control over the cost systems bear what you see from uh an inflationary cost of when you're pricing a different model you have you have basically you have having nailed down from the point of view of people that don't our school areas don't want modular build that they want construction building they can deliver within the same price as a modular build i presume that would be acceptable as well then i typically so but in in in in what we have done with our modular accommodation framework have put a very strong emphasis on the quality of the product and certainly we would have find culture has changed hugely and the the modular projects of today are a world of a difference to what might be the old prefabs of the past when we might have been back and back in school back in the day type of thing so it's certainly something and like we would even have had scenarios whereby schools might be in a pipeline for traditional and they see the quality of the modular moving over to the modular as a delivery mechanism beyond that so and like just it it's it's a challenging construction sector environment currently uh we're managing that as best we can and like even in the area of the special classes probably around and martina would have mentioned the total there of about 565 special classes that we're opening for the coming school year and we're managing about 90 of those within existing accommodation repurposing existing accommodation and that's probably one of the best examples of efficiency and reform measures that are achieving real savings and maximizing what the state gets for the investment it puts in the independent education the modular units in the areas where they work best it actually um it means that the delivery can be got faster and and within a time window so at least disruption to a school oh which which is which a good system oh yeah absolutely and it's typically a 12 month period from start to finish and we have project managers in place to support schools with that monitor the delivery of that and monitor them from the quality agenda as well all right definitely tell me did you want to come in with another question before we finish oh just to say thanks very much for your time and i really found it very very informative informative and i really appreciate you giving us your time and your expertise yeah uh myself personally uh it's been a very informative um meeting um all the questions that were asked that were answered which which is refreshing uh and and were answered in a way that everyone could actually get a grip to what they were asking the questions and in the different formats that did so um i actually thank you very much