Written answers

Tuesday, 15 October 2013

Department of Social Protection

School Meals Programme

Photo of Derek NolanDerek Nolan (Galway West, Labour)
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179. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the way she can justify a DEIS Band 1 school (details supplied) in County Galway receiving just €7,500 for a breakfast club, in view of the fact that the funding amount equates to just 15 cents per child; her views on whether the funding is significantly disproportionate to the amounts that other, less disadvantaged schools in the area are receiving; her views that granting funding to new clubs instead of existing, viable clubs is lacking in fairness; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43655/13]

Photo of Joan BurtonJoan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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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. 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 allocated an additional €2 million for the school meals programme in 2013, providing a total allocation of €37 million.

A total of some 1,000 schools/organisations received funding under the school meals local projects for the school year 2012/13. Priority for funding under the scheme is given to schools which are part of the Department of Education and Skills' initiative for disadvantaged schools, 'Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools' (DEIS). However, there is no automatic entitlement to funding and all applications must be considered in light of the available budget for the scheme.

The school referred to by the Deputy has received over €68,000 in total funding under the school meals local projects scheme since 2004. For the previous academic year, 2012/2013, the school was allocated funding of €7,500 in respect of their application to run a breakfast club for 100 pupils, 4 days per week for 34 weeks.

In the current academic year, the school applied for a significant increase in the level of funding in respect of a breakfast and lunch club for 267 pupils for 5 days across 36 weeks - requesting a total of over €105,000. The school has been allocated €7,500 to continue running the breakfast club as in previous years.

The additional €2 million allocated to the school meals programme budget for 2013 is being used to extend the school meals local projects scheme to additional DEIS and special schools. The Department contacted approximately 170 schools requesting expressions of interest in participating in the scheme for the current school year. Expressions of interest in joining the scheme were received from approximately 90 schools and applications from over 50 schools have been processed to date. Bringing new schools into the scheme is considered the fairest way of ensuring as many DEIS schools and disadvantaged pupils as possible have access to some level of funding under the school meals local projects scheme.

After the additional schools have finalised their food clubs, the Department will review the level of remaining funding available to DEIS schools which are currently participating in the programme. The school referred to by the Deputy will be examined as part of this process.

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