Katriona O'Sullivan

That's really interfering with my ability to participate in the world.

So I start with that.

Yeah.

And it's not just so the thinking of the hunger is the one thing, but we all know the word hangry.

Every one of us knows I'm hangry.

But imagine being seven years of age and being hangry.

We already can't really regulate our emotions as young kids.

But imagine the added hunger in your belly.

That

further exasperates or an inability to control yourself emotionally.

So in my case, I was hungry.

It was interfering with learning, but it also made me really reactive and really difficult as a child.

And we talk about breakfast clubs, school meals.

The only meal I ever got, I got during my early childhood was school meals.

And that then meals saved my life, you know, and this is not an old story.

This is why I tell the story now, like five to seven percent of kids here in Ireland with a second richest country in Europe are going to school hungry.

This is not a new story.

There's breakfast clubs happening across our country because we know that lots of kids are going to school hungry.

So I wanted to talk about that and I wanted to talk about the lifelong impact of that.

Like, I'm always hungry.