Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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292. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the number of schools with DEIS status that applied for the hot school-meal scheme but were not included through the process of random selection; and the estimated cost of including these schools within the scheme. [27444/21]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The school meals programme provides funding towards the provision of food to some 1,506 schools and organisations benefitting 230,000 children. The objective of the programme 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.

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 involved 37 schools benefitting 6,744 students for the 2019/2020 academic year and was aimed primarily at schools with no onsite cooking facilities.

In Budget 2021, I announced that an additional €5.5m would be provided to extend the provision of hot school meals to an additional 35,000 primary school children, currently receiving the cold lunch option. My Department issued invitations for expressions of interest to 705 (612 DEIS and 95 non-DEIS) primary schools in November 2020. A total of 281 (256 DEIS and 25 non-DEIS) expressions of interest were received in respect of 52,148 children.

The 35,000 places were allocated to each local authority area based on the number of children applied by local authority as a percentage of the total number. A minimum of one school for each Local Authority area was selected. Thereafter, a process of random selection was used for each area.

As a result of this process, 189 of the 281 schools that submitted an expression of interest were selected. Of the 189 schools selected, 171 (90.5%) are DEIS and 18 (9.5%) are non-DEIS.

Of the 92 schools that were not selected 85 are DEIS and 7 are non-DEIS.

There are 16,296 pupils in the 85 DEIS schools during the 2020/21 school year. Funding for cold lunches is already being provided for 15,716 pupils attending these schools at a cost of €3.7m annually.

For the 14 weeks (September – December 2021), the additional cost of providing hot school meals to all pupils in these 85 schools would be €1.9m, or €4.9m for the 36 weeks of the school year.

As Minister, I am committed to continuing to grow the hot school meals element of the school meals programme and building further on the significant extension announced as part of Budget 2021 and I am currently exploring options for the possible inclusion of the unsuccessful schools in the hot school meals programme.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.