Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)
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The school meals programme operated by my Department gives funding towards provision of food services for disadvantaged school children through two schemes. The first is the long-standing statutory urban school meals scheme, currently operated by 36 local authorities. The Department jointly funds the food costs with these local authorities, which also manage and fund the administration of the scheme. The second is the school meals local projects scheme, through which funding is provided by my Department to participating schools and voluntary community groups in urban and rural areas for specific school meals projects. This has recently been expanded to include pre-schools that are community based and which operate on a not-for-profit basis.

In the case of these local projects, my Department funds the food costs based on a rate per meal per child. The type and range of meals provided, as well as the method and logistics of supplying the meals, are decided by the individual local groups and schools that operate the projects.

The amount of funding allocated to a project depends on the type and number of meals provided. The 2004 Vote provision to my Department for the school meals programme was €6.08 million in total —€4.95 million for the school projects and €1.13 million towards the urban school meals scheme operated by the participating local authorities. In 2004 some 41,300 children benefited in 451 schools — 124 secondary schools and 327 primary schools — under the local projects scheme at a cost of €3.56 million. The urban scheme provided meals support for 386 primary schools, covering 50,817 pupils, at a cost to my Department of €1.09 million. Local authorities contributed a matching amount, and met the administrative costs involved in that scheme.

The school meals programme aims to provide regular nutritious food to children to help improve their daily diet. It is an important component of policies to encourage school attendance and educational achievement by the children, particularly those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

Under its programme of expenditure reviews, my Department completed a review of the school meals scheme in 2003. The review group recommended that a new scheme called the school food programme should be established, targeting secondary schools with the highest concentrations of pupils at risk of early school-leaving and their feeder primary schools. Given the scale of this initiative, the group recommended that the new programme should be phased in, targeting the most disadvantaged areas initially. In this regard the Department of Education and Science is using its schools completion programme and giving children an even break initiative to encourage the introduction and extension of school meals projects. My Department is also looking at additional ways of promoting the programme.