Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
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492. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection her plans to extend the school meals scheme during July and August 2020 to assist families on low incomes; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [13884/20]

Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
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493. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection her plans to extend the operation and funding for the school meals scheme during July and August 2020 to assist families on low incomes; her plans to extend the remit of the school meals scheme to include youth and community services; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [13885/20]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 492 and 493 together.

The school meals programme provides funding towards the provision of food to some 1,580 schools and organisations benefitting 250,000 children. The objective of the scheme is to provide regular, nutritious food to children who are unable, due to lack of good quality food, to take full advantage of the education provided to them. The programme is an important component of policies to encourage school attendance and extra educational achievement and coincides with the school year.

Funding under the school meals programme will remain available to schools to allow them to continue to provide food during the summer period until the start of the new academic year 2020/2021.

In recent years entry to the School Meals Scheme has been confined to DEIS schools in addition to schools identified as having levels of concentrated disadvantage that would benefit from access to the School Meals Programme.

Prior to the introduction of DEIS in 2005, all schools and organisations that were part of one of a number of Department of Education and Skills’ initiatives for disadvantaged schools were eligible to participate in the programme, which included Breaking the Cycle, Giving Children an Even Break, the Disadvantaged Area Scheme, Home School Community Liaison and the School Completion Programme. These schools and organisations have continued to remain in the scheme.

Any decision to extend the current provision would need to be considered in a budgetary context.

I trust that this clarifies the position.