The inability of children to access healthy food has been a recurring theme for decades.

You would think this would be a priority for a wealthy country with a booming economy. Yet Ireland continues to struggle to feed its children.

The Children’s Rights Alliance (CRA), in its 2025 Child Poverty Monitor, outlined how the number of children in consistent poverty had risen by a staggering 45,017 in 2024 to 102,977.

“This poverty is not inevitable,” stated the CRA. “Policy decisions and budget investments determine the fate of these children and young people.”

The Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) study reported recently that almost a quarter of children sometimes went to bed hungry in 2022, the latest year of the analysis.

These figures align with a similar study by Amárach Research for Barnardos, also conducted in 2022, which found 17% of Irish parents and a quarter of those not working outside the home were not able to provide their children with ‘a sufficiently nutritious diet, quality and quantity which you would ideally like’. A fifth of parents admitted to skipping or skimping on their own meals so they could adequately feed their children.

Food is a huge issue for families with barely enough to live on. The Hot School Meals scheme has helped, and a new pilot scheme to provide food in the school holidays is another bonus. But they are tinkering at the edges of the system rather than transforming it.

Our food system is killing us. Designed to produce cheap calories after World War II, it is now the cause of one in four adult deaths globally – more than 12 million a year that are due to poor diets. As always, it is the poorest and most marginalised who are most likely to be sicker and die sooner.

Senior fellow with the International Food Policy Research Institute, and author of Food Fight; From Plunder And Profit To People And Planet, Dr Stuart Gillespie writes that........

© Evening Echo