Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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230. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she will address a matter (details supplied); if she will sanction the school meals grant to this facility; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [49591/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The school meals programme provides funding towards the provision of food to schools and organisations at a total cost of some €47.5 million in 2017. As part of Budget 2017, the funding for the scheme was substantially increased by an additional €5.5 million which is benefitting up to 50,000 additional children from September 2017 bringing the total number of schools in the scheme to some 1,700 and the number of children supported up to 250,000.

In recent years priority for new applications for funding had been given to schools which are part of the DEIS programme, designed to give tailored support to schools who have high concentration of disadvantage. The school meals scheme provides funding for a breakfast for all children and lunch for up to 90% of children in DEIS schools. For the first time in many years, breakfasts are also now available to some schools outside DEIS that have been identified in consultation with the Department of Education and Skills which has developed a more robust and responsive framework for assessing individual schools levels of concentrated disadvantage.

While there have been expansions to the school meals scheme, any further changes to increase the funding to allow an extension to crèches would have to be considered in a budgetary context.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.