Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Question 288: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs if he will ensure that sufficient funding is put in place for schools who apply for and are given verbal permission to provide school meals under the school meals local projects scheme for the school year starting in 2008 in order to avoid the situation that happened in October 2007 when schools who were providing school meals were told after three weeks to cease the practice as there was no budget in place to provide payment; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27423/07]

Martin Cullen (Waterford, 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 second is the school meals (local projects) programme through which funding is provided by my Department to participating schools in both urban and rural areas who are running specific school meals projects.

The school meals programme has expanded significantly in recent years to include a large number of disadvantaged school children and this trend will continue throughout 2007 and in future years. The number of meals being provided on a daily basis to disadvantaged children through the school meals local projects scheme 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 and this is expected to increase to 165,000 plus pupils in over 1,800 schools in 2007.

As demand on the School Meals Local Projects Scheme has increased dramatically in 2007, and due to budget constraints, a number of schools were informed that their applications for funding under the scheme could not be processed in 2007.

However, I have now secured additional funding for the school meals scheme to cater for the continuation of the scheme in 2007. A number of schools whose applications were refused requested a review of this decision on the basis that they were given verbal agreement that the school was eligible to apply for funding as they are part of the Department of Education & Science's initiative for disadvantaged schools, 'Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools' (DEIS). These schools have now had their applications reconsidered and, subject to meeting the normal criteria of the scheme, their applications can be processed in 2007.

In relation to further new applications, demand for the scheme remains high and priority will be given to schools which have DEIS status. However, schools must submit the relevant application form and receive written approval prior to establishing their food clubs. There is no automatic entitlement to funding under the School Meals Scheme. Each application will be considered in the context of the overall budget available for the scheme. I will be requesting additional funding for Budget 2008 to allow the scheme to expand in 2008 to include additional DEIS schools.