Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)
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51. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if costings have been undertaken for providing a daily school meal for all primary and secondary school children in the country; what these costs are; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [34447/14]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The school meals programme provides funding towards the provision of food services to approximately 1,600 schools and organisations which benefits some 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. The Government has provided €37 million for the school meals programme in 2014.

Despite pressure on the social protection budget, the Government allocated an additional €2 million for the school meals programme in 2013, increasing the total allocation from €35 million to €37 million. The additional €2 million was used to extend the programme to some 100 additional DEIS and special schools who were not part of the scheme.

The programme is in place to provide support to disadvantaged children and priority 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). Costings are not available in respect of extending the scheme to all primary and secondary school children in the country. The cost of extending the scheme to additional schools can only be quantified where more specific information is available such as the type of food clubs to be provided. Any extension to the scheme could only be considered in a budgetary context.