Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am taking this matter on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Humphreys. I thank the Deputy for raising this issue.

The school meals programme funds the provision of food to some 1,600 schools and organisations, benefitting 260,000 children. The objective of the programme is to provide regular, nutritious food to children to enable them to take full advantage of the education provided to them. The programme is an important component of policies to encourage school attendance and extra educational achievement. At budget time, the Government provided €94.4 million for the school meals programme for 2023.

In recent years, entry to the school meals scheme has been confined to DEIS schools, in addition to schools identified as having a level of concentrated disadvantage that would benefit from access to the programme. Prior to the introduction of DEIS, all schools and organisations that were part of a number of Department of Education initiatives for disadvantaged schools were eligible to participate in the various programmes. These initiatives included Breaking the Cycle, giving children an even break, the disadvantaged area scheme, home school community liaison and the school completion programme. These schools and organisations have continued to remain in the scheme since the introduction of DEIS in 2005 but their level of funding has been capped at the same rate year on year to allow for the concentration of the programme on DEIS schools. There were a variety of schemes but DEIS is the principal programme in place now, notwithstanding some are still in the system from prior to DEIS's introduction.

The Minister is committed to continuing to grow the school meals programme and, in particular, the hot school meals element, building further on the significant extensions announced in the last few budgets. In March 2022, the Minister for Education announced an extension of DEIS status to an additional 320 schools from September 2022. In July, the Minister for Social Protection announced that access to the hot school meals option would be extended to 282 newly designated DEIS primary schools and that the cold lunch would be extended to the 38 newly designated DEIS secondary schools. This extension applied from September, benefitting some 60,000 children. This allowed all pupils in new DEIS schools to avail of one a substantial meal for the additional budget provided.

Last week, the Government approved an additional €14.5 million to allow access to the hot school meals programme for all remaining DEIS primary schools from September 2023, benefiting 64,500 children. These schools currently have access to cold lunches funding. In addition, the Government has approved the commencement of the roll-out of the hot school meals programme to non-DEIS primary schools. There are no secondary school children in receipt of the programme as it is aimed at primary schools with no on-site cooking facilities.

In 2022, the Minister for Social Protection commissioned the evaluation of the school meals programme to review all elements thereof. The final report was recently received and is being reviewed. This report will help to inform future decisions around this important programme.

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. I concur with what she said about the issues of inclusion of various schools in DEIS, with other schools not being included. We have the exact same situation in many areas. I know of areas where the same families are going to the same school. A school on one side of the road is in the DEIS area and a school on the other side of the road, is not. The area is continually being reviewed.

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