Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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89. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if additional funding will be provided to a scheme (details supplied) in County Laois; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [27534/14]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The school meals programme provides funding towards the provision of food services to some 1,200 schools and organisations which benefits over 205,000 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 scheme through which funding is provided directly to participating schools and local and voluntary community groups who run their own school meals projects. Despite pressure on the social protection budget, the Government allocated an additional €2 million for the school meals programme in 2013, providing a total allocation of €37 million.

The additional €2 million allocated to the school meals programme budget for 2013 was used to extend the school meals local projects scheme to some 100 additional DEIS and special schools. 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 scheme.

The school referred to by the Deputy has received over €97,000 in total funding under the school meals local projects scheme since 2006 and was allocated funding of €15,000 for the current academic year. For the forthcoming academic year, 2014/15, the school has applied for a significant increase in funding in respect of a lunch club for 757 pupils requesting a total funding of almost €194,000. I regret that any increased payments to existing schools of the scheme can only be considered in a budgetary context.