Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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611. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the allocation to Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived, FEAD, Ireland in each of the years 2014 to 2017 and to date in 2018; the distribution of this funding; if funding to FEAD Ireland has increased as a result of the homeless crisis; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [52719/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD) supports the actions of EU countries to provide material/food assistance to the most deprived. Funding of €3.8 billion is available via the Fund between 2014 and 2020. Each Member State has to match this with a minimum of 15% national funding.

The total value of the fund in Ireland for the period 2014 to 2020 is €26.7m, €4m of which will come from the Irish Exchequer.

The FEAD operation in Ireland began in July 2016. The delay was due to the need to ensure that suitable governance and distribution procedures were in place. Almost €900,000 was spent in 2016, increasing to over €2.5m in 2017 and at the end of November 2018, total funding of approx. €8.9m has been spent through FEAD.

In 2017, though a network of charitable partnership organisations, the Department distributed almost 1,000 tonnes of food to almost 96,000 people in communities throughout the country, either in the form of food parcels or as meals prepared by charitable organisation.

Currently there are 151 approved charities operating the programme, access to this operation remains open for the duration of the Fund. An organisation looking to access the food should send an email to fead@welfare.ie .