Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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122. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection further to Parliamentary Question No. 544 of 18 October 2022, if consideration will be given to extending the hot-meal scheme to a school (details supplied), in view of the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, the fact that the school is a DEIS school in a low-income area, and that many children are dependent on the hot meals; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [53718/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The school meals programme provides funding towards the provision of food to some 1,700 schools and organisations benefitting 260,000 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.

Budget 2022 provided €68.1 million for the programme with an additional €9m provided to allow access to all new DEIS schools from September 2022.

Access to the hot school meals funding is provided to the schools that were selected for the pilot, the DEIS schools that submitted an expression of interest for the extension of hot school meals in 2021, as well as the new DEIS schools from September 2022. The school referred to by the Deputy is not one of these schools with access to hot school meal funding but have been assured that they remain eligible to receive funding for the breakfast and the cold lunch.

I am committed to continuing to expand the school meals programme and building further on the significant extension of the programme in recent years. In this regard, I commissioned the evaluation of the school meals programme to review all elements of the programme. The final report is due to be completed by the end of the year and will be published thereafter.

I trust this clarifies the matter.