Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein)
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622. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the number of children availing of hot free school meals; and the cost per child and school of delivering same. [18828/20]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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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, 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.

As part of Budget 2019, funding was provided for a pilot scheme from September 2019, providing hot school meals in primary schools at a cost of €1m for 2019 and €2.5m in 2020.  The pilot involves 37 schools benefitting 6,744 students for the 2019/2020 academic year.  Hot meals are paid at the rate of €2.90 per child per day.

Budget 2020 provided an additional €4 million in funding to extend the hot meals for children currently receiving the cold lunch option, which will allow my Department to extend the hot meals from September 2020 to an additional 35,000 children who currently receive the cold lunch option. A decision has been made to delay the extension of the hot meals to January 2021 because of the closure of schools due to Covid-19 from 13 March 2020.  The 37 schools in the pilot will continue to avail of the hot school meals option from September 2020.

A breakdown of the allocations provided to schools for the Hot Meals Pilot is detailed in the attached Tabular Statement. 

Table: Allocations provided to schools participating in the Hot Meals Pilot 2019/2020 academic year.