Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein)
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46. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection her long-term plans to ensure school meals are available in as many schools across Ireland as possible. [5498/22]

Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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57. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection her plans to roll out the hot schools meals programme to include every school in the country; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [5457/22]

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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111. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the status of the extension of the hot school meals programme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [5390/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 46, 57 and 111 together.

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.

A budget of €68.1 million has been provided for the scheme in 2022.

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 to extend the provision of hot school meals to an additional 35,000 primary school children, currently receiving the cold lunch option. Invitations for expressions of interest were issued to 705 primary schools (612 DEIS and 93 non-DEIS) 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.

Budget 2022 is providing for the hot school meals to be extended from January 2022 to the 81 DEIS schools that submitted an expression of interest but were not selected in the extension to 35,000 children as referred to earlier.

I am committed to continuing to grow the hot school meals element of the school meals programme for DEIS schools and building further on the significant extension announced as part of Budget 2022. In this regard, I have commissioned an evaluation of the school meals programme to be undertaken in 2022 to inform future policy decisions on the scheme.

Any extension of the school meals programme or the hot school meals beyond 2022 will need to be considered as part of the budgetary process.

I trust this clarifies the matter.