Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will provide in tabular form the number of schools accessing support through the school meals programme. [48882/12]

Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will provide in tabular form the number of children receiving their school meals through the school meals programme. [48883/12]

Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will provide in tabular form the schools that have successfully applied for inclusion under the school meals' programme; and the number of schools that were refused inclusion in the school meals' programme. [48884/12]

Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection the annual Departmental spend on the 2011/2012 school meals programme. [48885/12]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 99 to 102, inclusive, together.

The school meals programme provides funding towards the provision of food services for disadvantaged children through two schemes. The first is the statutory urban school meals scheme, operated by local authorities and part-financed by the Department of Social Protection. The second is the school meals local projects schemes through which funding is provided directly to participating schools and local and voluntary community groups who run their own school meals projects. The Government has provided €35 million for the school meals programme in 2012.

As the budget allocation for the school meals programme has not increased in recent years, new applications for inclusion in the scheme are retained on file by my Department and are considered for inclusion as additional funding become available through schools opting out of the programme. Priority for funding is given to schools which are part of the Department of Education and Skill’s initiative for disadvantaged schools, ‘Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools’ (DEIS). All DEIS schools who applied to join the scheme in the previous school year have been invited to participate in the 2012-2013 school meals programme. Over 40 additional DEIS schools have joined the scheme during the past four years.

Information on the numbers of children and schools-groups accessing support through the school meals programme is set out in the following tabular statement.

School Meals Programme