Debate contribution: Education (Holiday Meal Payments) Bill: Further Consideration Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Nick Mathison on 12 October 2026.

MLA: Mr Nick Mathison
Party at the time: Alliance Party
Date: 12 October 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Education (Holiday Meal Payments) Bill: Further Consideration Stage
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5786402

Text

I will make just a wee bit more progress. I will finish my remarks on finance and then bring you in. Another example that I will give — I have been labouring this point, possibly as a lone voice — is that £5 million is spent every year on placing two-year-olds in our nursery schools, and £5 million is not an inconsequential sum. The Minister's officials have told the Committee that that spend does not lead to effective provision for those children. It is not where they should be placed, yet, year-on-year, certainly in the last academic year for which I have records, we spend in excess of £5 million on that. We need to be clear that, although the Bill comes with a price tag, the notion that the Department is simply running like a well-oiled machine with no waste and that nothing can be done around any of the spend that comes out of the Department does not hold water. We spend more and more each year on SEN provision, yet, year after year, parents and teachers tell us that that support is not effective and that it does not deliver the outcomes that are needed. I have put it on record that we continue to operate a divided and inefficient education system, but the Minister has told me repeatedly that he does not feel that the cost of division in education needs any attention. We have no evidence of savings from the wholescale reorganisation of the system that created the Education Authority a number of years ago. I am not clear about whether there is a clear commitment to deal with an area-planning system that does not tackle the need to rightsize the school estate. I could go on, but I am conscious that I may be about to be quickly brought back to speak to the amendments, so, at this point, I will bring in Peter Martin before I return to the remainder of my speech.
I thank the Member for that intervention. I will say two things. First, the Assembly has choices to make, and that is what we are doing today. Secondly, once additional spend is built in for the Department, the Minister has choices about what he does in order to facilitate that spend. That is for the Minister. Again, as I said, I have no doubt that the Minister will be very effective in making the case to the Finance Minister about the extra resource that he requires. I move to amendment No 8. I also have some concerns about it. Perhaps the Minister will speak to it in more detail and provide some clarity in his remarks. It creates what look to me to be quite substantial regulation-making powers in relation to article 58A(1) to (9), which are, essentially, the new provisions that will be inserted by amendment No 1 if it passes. Again, while such regulation-making powers are not unusual in a Bill, my reading is that clause 4, as amended at Consideration Stage, builds in similar provisions based on wording that was developed with the assistance of the Examiner of Statutory Rules. I am content that the current clause 4, as previously amended, builds in those powers for the Department. Similarly, it is my view that the current clause 4, as previously amended, seems to be clear on commencement dates and the intention to ensure that payments land at the next relevant holiday period. I do not, at this stage, have any sense that amendment Nos 11 to 14 are required to go through today. Amendment No 1 is a substantive tidying amendment. I will refer to the Minister's letter to me as Chair of the Committee. He addressed some of these points in his opening remarks, but I want to be clear on the assurances that were given in that letter, because it is important to put them on the record. It is a reasonably substantial bit of text, but it is very important that we are clear on the Minister's position in his engagement with the Committee around the purpose of amendment No 1. I quote from the Minister's letter to me:
"Following engagement with First Legislative Counsel (FLC), work has been undertaken on tidying-up’ amendments that seek to ensure that the Bill is drafted in the most legislatively appropriate manner without changing the policy intent of the Bill. FLC has deemed it more effective to seek to do so by rewriting the Bill rather than making a large number of amendments to the existing text. I want to be clear that these amendments are not intended to change the policy agreed at Consideration Stage or the end outcome for pupils".
I think that that is very clear. I welcome his assurance that amendment No 1 is being presented to us for our consideration not as an amendment that is about unpicking the Bill's policy intent but as one that is about ensuring that it gives the most effective legal clarity that we can achieve. I thank the Minister for bringing that forward, and I am certainly content with those assurances.
I also reference the Minister's letter to me as Chair of the Committee about the Committee amendment tabled in my name. It provides an assurance about the value of the payments. The letter states:
"My officials had identified concerns with the proposed wording of the amendment. In post-primary schools, there is no single charge for a school meal; individual menu items are priced individually and a pupil is free to select whichever items they wish. A pupil entitled to free school meals (FSM) in a post-primary setting is provided with a daily allowance that can be used to cover some/all of the cost of their food items rather than being charged a single meal price. As a result, there is no single amount against which your amendment's test could be applied for post-primary pupils and officials are concerned the provision could prove difficult to interpret or apply consistently in practice."
The Minister is clear in that correspondence. Based on the content of the letter, I feel that the engagement on the amendment, which relates to the value of the post-primary payment and how it should be set, is constructive. The issue certainly went back and forth during the Committee's consideration of the Bill, and I welcome the Minister's coming at it from a constructive position. I apologise that I had to read out a lengthy excerpt, but it was important for me, by way of supporting amendment No 1, to have it on the record in order to clarify the Minister's assurances on which I am relying. I welcome the fact that the Minister, in his remarks today, has confirmed that amendment No 1 delivers the Bill sponsor's policy intent but with improved clarity and effectiveness. The post-primary issue is technical, but it is important that we get it right. There is no single meal price for that cohort of pupils. Rather, there is a daily allowance. I am content that proposed new article 58A(9) in amendment No 1 addresses that clearly. To my mind, that is preferable to how the Bill is currently amended, which makes reference to a single "daily allowance" and does not really tally with the situation in primary-school settings in particular, where there is a unit price as opposed to the daily allowance for post-primary settings. The clarity is therefore welcome, and I hope that when it comes to the administration of the Bill's provisions, that will give the clarity that the Education Authority, in all likelihood, will need in order to set the payment level appropriately. Similarly, I have no issue with amendment No 5, which provides flexibility in the Bill on the setting of the holiday dates on which the payments will apply. The Bill as amended at Consideration Stage has similar provisions built into clause 1, and I am content to take the expert advice from the First Legislative Counsel (FLC) and will go with his wording to ensure clarity and consistency. To summarise, the Alliance Party has consistently supported the Bill's intent to ensure that families have access to holiday meal payments. We are therefore happy to support amendment Nos 1, 5, 9 and 10 in order to deliver the clearest, most coherent mechanism to deliver on that policy intention. As I outlined, however, amendment No 6 hands over to the Minister and the Department all the control for releasing the first payment, and that is not acceptable for parents who desperately need the support. For that reason, I cannot support it. We have not had sufficient time to understand fully the scope and extent of amendment No 8, so I do not plan to support it today. I am, however, open to hearing what the Minister has to say about it. I am also content with clause 4 as amended at Consideration Stage, so, on that basis, I do not consider amendment Nos 11 to 14 to be necessary. I have a concern that, in fact, they put at risk the principle that payments should commence at the next available "relevant", or, more simply put, holiday, period. I look forward to the Bill's passing Further Consideration Stage today. I hope that it will not be long before it reaches Final Stage and progresses to becoming law.

1,560 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Awaiting analysis

This record has not been analysed yet. It is not counted in any total until it has been assessed.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reviews every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification