Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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79. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the progress that has been made in expanding the hot school meals programme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [24392/23]

Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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I ask the Minister to outline the progress that has been made in expanding the hot school meals programme and to make a statement on the matter.

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The school meals programme provides funding towards food services for some 1,600 schools and organisations, benefiting 260,000 children. The objective of the programme is to provide regular, nutritious food to children to support them in taking full advantage of the education provided to them. The programme is an important component of policies to encourage school attendance and extra educational achievement.

Budget 2023 provided €94.4 million for the programme. The Government recently approved an additional €14.5 million to allow access to the hot school meals scheme for all remaining DEIS schools from September 2023. On 30 March, I published an independent evaluation of the school meals programme, which sets out the positive impact the programme is having on children's education and well-being.

The evaluation is evidence based and sets out a series of recommendations for expanding the school meals programme into the future. There is an overwhelming consensus among all participants in the evaluation that the school meals programme is effective. This indicates strong support for extending the school meals programme. Since my appointment as Minister for Social Protection, I have increased the number of schools with access to the hot school meal option from 37 to more than 500. I am committed to continuing to expand the school meals programme and building further on the significant extension of the programme that has taken place in recent years. In this regard, I intend to roll out the hot school meals to all remaining DEIS primary schools and special schools from September 2023. This will increase the numbers on the scheme dramatically to 1,000 schools and 150,000 children. From 2024, we will start the roll-out of hot school meals to all remaining primary schools, in line with the recommendation in the report of universal provision by 2030. My ambition is to move faster and I believe we can reach all primary schools sooner than that.

Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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I welcome this decision. There are quite a number of DEIS schools in my constituency of Cork North-Central. I welcome the fact that the hot meals programme will be available in all DEIS schools from September. One problem with rolling out and expanding the programme is that we started off in 2020 with 30 schools on the hot meals programme. Now it is up to 500 but the Minister believes we can have all the structures and the necessary supports in place by September to double the number of schools that are currently in the programme. The Minister mentioned that the programme will involve 500 schools by September and that by the end of the year it will involve more than 1,000 schools. I wonder what progress has been made to date in making sure everything is ready to go from 1 September.

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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We have been working with the school meals providers. There are a number of different providers who tender through the process. We increased the rates they are paid because they had not increased in many years. The rates they receive have been increased from 1 January this year. We are in constant contact with them. I am satisfied that we can roll this out to the DEIS schools and meet the target for this year. With regard to next year, we are putting out a call now to non-DEIS primary schools that may be interested in providing the hot school meals programme. We are putting that call out and we will see who comes forward. My aim is that by the time he or she goes to primary school, any child born today will get a hot school meal.

Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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I recall being involved in a pilot project which provided meals at breakfast time when the children came into school. That had a huge effect in getting children into school. Likewise I believe this programme will have a huge advantage for schools, especially DEIS schools. I very much welcome the decision. I hope that all the schools being targeted will be able to offer hot meals from September onwards.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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Before the Minister comes in, I call Deputy Cathal Crowe.

Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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As a teacher I love this initiative. It is transformative. The quicker it rolls out, the better. There is one small flaw that I would love to see the Minister address. The data set that designates a school as a DEIS school is based on Pobal statistics which are linked to the census that happens every five years. A child factored into census 2022 could very well be a teenager or possibly even an adult depending on their age. It does not truly capture the transience of the rental market. It does not capture the transience of the large number of Ukrainian people and international protection applicants who come into our county. It does not fully get the make-up of a community. Shannon in County Clare is a perfect example. Lisdoonvarna is another example where the population has increased fourfold. We can see that deprivation has come with that but it is not fully captured in the statistics. The best data set, and other countries use it, is the school census that is run by the school inspectorate in a school or a school cluster. It involves taking a temperature gauge of a range of poverty or deprivation indices. That is what you should use as the data set, rather than the old traditional five-year census.

Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I certainly will not be critical of this as it is something that I advocated for as education spokesperson until recently. It is beneficial and great to see it being rolled out in schools, even though we started from a long way back compared with other European countries. It is good to see we are catching up. I have more of a statement than a question. As we roll this out, it is important to ensure on an ongoing basis over the course of many years that we keep an eye on quality. In some countries that have long-established school meals systems, the quality has slipped. I am not saying there is a problem with the quality at the minute. My own young fellow gets school meals and he is very happy with them. We need to ensure it is monitored on an ongoing basis over the next few decades.

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I support absolutely the hot school meals programme. The Deputy mentioned the quality. We have a committee that monitors and checks the quality. We make sure the children receive good, healthy food and schools must reapply for funding in advance of each school year. They are required to submit detailed records. Expenditure on all healthy food items is deducted from the following year’s funding allocation. The most important thing is good quality and good food.

When I went to a boys' primary school in Artane to announce the expansion of the school meals programme, I was impressed to see that the school meals given to the kids are hot because they come in a foil container. The schools do not need to worry about heating it up. This programme is a wonderful equaliser. Every one of those children sat down to eat their meals, having chosen their menu from the previous week. There were ten different options for them to choose from. Each day could be different. They all turned their desks around, sat around the table and had a conversation as they ate their hot dinner. It would do your heart good to see it. The teachers could not praise it enough. They said the difference it makes to the child's educational attainment is game changing. I have committed to doing this and to moving it on as quickly as I can.