The principal of a primary school in Co Clare said they are "very disappointed" that it will not be able to provide hot meals to pupils because of changes to the school meals programme guidelines.
Clohanes National School principal Aideen O'Mahoney said the Government's changes to its school meals programme mean the provider of the meals, Lunch Bag, in conjunction with the school, cannot provide hot lunches to students.
Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne, she said previously Lunch Bag had dropped the meals "in an ice box" early in the morning after which a member of staff would reheat them for the children.
The oven used to reheat the meals is located in one of the school's three rooms, which "doubles a staff room, as a set room, as a store room, as an art supply room", Ms O'Mahoney said.
However, she said, the new guidelines "now state that the oven can't be in a staff room" and needs to be "in a separate room, in a separate utility area".
She said the school does not have such a space, adding: "We don't have funding to put on an extra building or an extra unit outside the school to house the oven."
Ms O'Mahoney said the previous rules had "worked for the last year-and-a-half without any issues in schools", and said she does not know if there is any way of getting around the changes.
She added that the second issue related to Lunch Bag, saying it "needs to employ an operator to come in and turn on the oven, heat the lunches and distribute them, whereas we've been doing that, with small numbers, we didn't need somebody".
"It only takes five minutes to check the temperature of the lunches, get them into the oven and then check them again and they're distributed each of the classrooms," she added.
Ms O'Mahoney said that the changes to the guidelines have affected schools "who have 50 pupils or less" that are mostly located in rural Ireland.
"So again, we always hear rural Ireland losing out on different things and this is just another one to add to the list," she said.
The Lunch Bag CEO Ray Nagle said it was "an extremely difficult decision" to stop supplying several schools with meals due to the guideline changes.
He said the decision will affect 82 schools, with an average of 20 students each.
Speaking on the same programme, Mr Nagle said the supplier "worked very hard with these small schools to come up with a service that worked for both us and for them, and more importantly for the kids".
He said: "We get paid €3.20 per meal, so in a small school of 20 kids, we get paid €64 a day to feed those 20 kids, versus in an average size school of 200 kids, we get €3.20 per child.
"So it's €640.00."
The difference in revenue, he said, means in a larger school, The Lunch Bag "can hire an independent person to go in and to heat the meals and to distribute them".
