Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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416. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the reason a school (details supplied) is not included in the hot meals scheme unlike other schools in the area; if she will instruct her Department to include the school in the scheme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [28017/21]

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 on-site 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. Officials from the 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.

Knockmore Junior School submitted an Expression of Interest for the Hot Meals Scheme as part of the five-school Killinarden School Completion Programme which also included Cnoc Mhuire Senior School. Unfortunately Knockmore Junior School was not selected.

Due to the fact that the funding available was limited to 35,000 children, it was not possible to include all schools that submitted an expression of interest to avail of hot school meals. I appreciate that this is disappointing for the school.

I am currently exploring options for the possible inclusion of unsuccessful schools in the Hot School Meals programme.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.