Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Question 114: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs if he will roll out a State wide school breakfast and meal scheme free of charge to pupils. [21476/07]

Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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The school meals programme operated by my Department gives funding through two schemes towards provision of food services for disadvantaged school children. The first is the long-standing statutory urban school meals scheme, currently operated by 36 local authorities. The second is the school meals community (local projects) programme through which funding is provided by my Department to participating schools and voluntary community groups in both urban and rural areas who are running specific school meals projects, including breakfast clubs.

The Department of Education and Science identified a total of 875 disadvantaged schools under the 'Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools' (DEIS) action plan in 2005. Approximately 400 of these schools were already receiving school meal funding.

The remaining schools were invited to apply for funding in August/September 2006. To date, a total of 651 DEIS schools are participating in the scheme.

The school meals programme has expanded significantly in recent years. The number of meals being provided on a daily basis to disadvantaged children through the school meals local projects scheme has doubled from 89,915 in the school year 2005/2006 to 179,660 in the school year 2006/2007. In 2006, some 1,394 schools with over 145,000 pupils benefited under the scheme. This is expected to increases to more than 165,000 pupils in over 1,800 schools throughout the state in 2007.

The school meals programme makes an important contribution to ensuring that school children receive better nutrition and contributes to improved school attendance and quality of learning. All relevant research indicates that there is a strong link between nutritional intake and cognitive ability and that inadequate nutrition impacts negatively on a child's ability to learn and benefit from education.

I am satisfied that the additional funding given to the school meals programme in recent years has enabled the programme to expand significantly and to assist schools and projects to provide healthy, nutritious food to the most disadvantaged children in our society who, by reason of lack of food, are unable to take full advantage of the educational opportunities presented to them.

The focus of the school meals scheme will remain on disadvantaged children and the inclusion of eligible DEIS schools in the scheme will continue to be my Department's main priority.