Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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384. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the initiatives being undertaken in her Department in relation to addressing food poverty; the research or scoping exercises being undertaken; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [27799/21]

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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The income supports provided by my Department help to meet the basic living needs of individuals and families across Ireland. In addition to these supports, my Department provides the following targeted measures:

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. It is an important component of policies to encourage school attendance and extra educational achievement. Since the start of the pandemic, Minister Humphreys has worked with colleagues in Government to ensure that funding continued to be provided for the school meals programme throughout the pandemic while schools were closed and over holiday periods. The government has provided €65.1m for the School Meals Programme in 2021.

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, an additional €5.5m is being provided to extend the provision of hot school meals to an additional 35,000 primary school children, currently receiving the cold lunch option. The Department of Social Protection issued invitations for expressions of interest to 705 primary schools in November 2020. A total of 281 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. As a result of this process, 189 of the 281 schools that submitted an expression of interest were selected.

The Department of Social Protection is the designated managing authority for the Operational Programme for the Fund for European Aid to the most Deprived (FEAD) and has responsibility for the implementation of the programme in Ireland. FEAD supports EU Member States’ actions to provide material assistance to the most deprived. The total value of the fund in Ireland is €26.7m, €4m of which will come from the Irish Exchequer. FEAD support helps people take their first steps out of poverty and social exclusion and helps the most deprived people by addressing their most basic needs. Over €16m has been spent on food since operations commenced in late 2016. There are over 150 charities, approved as Partner Organisations and over 5,100 tonnes of food has been distributed to communities through these charities.

In January 2020, Government published the Roadmap for Social for Social Inclusion 2020-2025 which aims to reduce poverty and improve social inclusion in Ireland. The Roadmap outlines 66 unique commitments for delivery across Government, including Commitment 61: “develop a comprehensive programme of work to further explore the drivers of food poverty and to identify mitigating actions.”

Following a meeting of the Social Inclusion Roadmap Steering Group on 30 March 2021, I announced the establishment of a Working Group to tackle the issue of food poverty. I have recently written to relevant Departments seeking nominations of members for this group and draft terms of reference will be agreed when the group first meets. This group will provide updates on its work to the Social Inclusion Roadmap Steering Group, which I chair.

I thank the Deputy for her question and hope this clarifies the matter.