Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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168. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she recognises the importance of saving the free hot meals scheme given that some of the children who depend on the meals may not only come from hubs, hostels or hotels but they also may come from a home where addiction is rampant (details supplied); and if she will confirm her Department’s plan to ensure that these hot meals continue to be provided to children who need them. [62436/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The School Meals Programme provides funding towards the provision of food services to some 1,600 schools and organisations benefitting 260,000 children. The objective of the programme is to provide regular, nutritious food to children to position them 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. Additional funding for the programme has been provided for 2023 bringing the total to €94.4m. This represents a 53% funding increase in the period since 2020.

Funding under the school meals programme can be provided for breakfast, snack, cold lunch, dinner, hot school meals and afterschool clubs and is based on a maximum rate per child per day, depending on the type of meal being provided.

In March 2022, the Minister for Education announced an extension of the DEIS status to an additional 320 schools from September 2022. In July, I announced that access to the hot school meal option would be extended to the 282 newly designated DEIS primary schools and to the cold lunch option to the 38 newly designated DEIS secondary schools from September benefitting some 60,000 children.

This means that, since my appointment as Minister for Social Protection, I have increased the number of schools with access to the Hot School Meal option from 37 to over 500.

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, including the funding rates currently being provided for the various meal options. The final report is due to be completed by the end of the year and will help to inform future decisions around this important programme.

I trust this clarifies the matter.