Experts urge housing and childcare over free school lunches

Experts and opposition politicians have questioned the priorities in a family policy package presented by Lithuania’s Ministry of Social Security and Labour, LRT reported. The package would allocate 375.9 million euros of its nearly 770 million euro budget to free lunches for all pupils in grades five to 10.

Birutė Sabatauskaitė, director of the Lithuanian Centre for Human Rights, said the limited state budget required clear priorities and questioned whether all the proposed measures were linked to raising the birth rate.

She also said the package paid insufficient attention to gender equality and balancing work and family life.

Tomas Tomilinas of the Democratic faction For Lithuania said free school meals would account for a smaller share of the funding next year. He identified guaranteeing 100 percent of income throughout parental leave as one of the key measures requested by families.

Gintarė Skaistė, a member of the Homeland Union Lithuanian Christian Democrats faction, said the measures should be considered together. She argued that simply increasing funding for a first-home programme could push up prices because the number of available apartments would remain limited.

Skaistė also said childcare provision should be expanded. In her view, families who want it should be guaranteed a place in a nursery from the time a child is one and a half years old, rather than having to wait if places are available only from age two.

Tomilinas responded that these measures were included in his government’s programme.

Roma Jusienė, a member of the National Family Council, said the package showed insufficient cooperation between ministries. She identified housing access, work and family reconciliation, and the availability of services as key areas for improvement.

Those services, she said, included quality education, activities for children and healthcare, with particular attention to the first years of life.

Daiva Skučienė, head of the Department of Social Policy at Vilnius University, also highlighted childcare. She said higher-income families considering having children particularly needed accessible childcare services, including nurseries for children from the age of one.

Vaida Budzevičiūtė, an adviser to President Gitanas Nausėda, described the package’s range of measures as its strength. She said it was among the first proposals to include measures extending beyond the first two years after a child’s birth.

Jūratė Zailskienė of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party defended the free school meal proposal. She said the package was not intended only to increase the birth rate, but also to ensure families could rely on state support as their children grew.

The ministry’s package contains nine measures, three of them new, while the others are being improved or expanded.