Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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286. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if a school (details supplied) will be included in the DEIS programme in order to avail of the schools meal programme; if not, if it can avail of other support for school meals in view of the fact it is not a DEIS school; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5145/20]

Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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Responsibility for the School Meals Programme lies with my colleague the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection. The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection has indicated that an application for funding under the School Meals Programme was received from the school but was declined by that Department because priority for new applications is given to schools which are part of the DEIS programme. A letter issued to the principal on 13th June 2019 to confirm this position.

My Department is in the final stages of refinement of the new DEIS identification model, based on school enrolment data, and the latest data available from Census 2016 using the HP Deprivation Index. A detailed quality analysis of the data has been carried out by members of the DEIS Technical Group which contains representatives of my Department's Statistics and Social Inclusion unit, the Inspectorate and the Educational Research Centre. The work of the DEIS Technical group is at an advanced stage and a consultation process with education stakeholder representatives on the technical aspect of the refinement of the new DEIS ID model is in progress. It is envisaged that this will then provide the basis for the development of a DEIS resource allocation system to match resources to identified need. Until this work is complete, it is not intended to extend the DEIS programme to any further schools.