Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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866. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the reason hot lunches in DEIS schools and underprivileged schools have been terminated (details supplied). [63848/22]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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867. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she will instruct the ETBI to provide details of the budgets provided for each school per year in relation to the issue regarding the cost of hot lunches in Deis schools and underprivileged schools. [63849/22]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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868. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she will provide details of the type of food that is being provided in relation to the issue regarding the cost of hot lunches in Deis schools and underprivileged schools. [63850/22]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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869. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if each child gets €4.40 a day with a budget of €94.4 million and 60,000 children in relation to the cost of hot lunches in Deis schools and underprivileged schools; and if she will provide a breakdown of the expenditure in tabular form. [63851/22]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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870. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the person or body that holds the contract to provide hot lunches in Deis schools and underprivileged schools. [63852/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 866 to 870, inclusive, together.

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 support them in taking 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 (local projects) scheme 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.  

Funding does not issue at a rate of €4.40per child.  The current rates of funding are €0.60 for a breakfast/snack, €1.40 for the cold lunch, €1.90 for the dinner and €2.90 for the hot school meal.  The dinner provides a hot meal, but are different from the hot school meal, in that they tend to be provided by schools with onsite cooking facilities whereas food for hot school meals is prepared offsite and either delivered hot or reheated in the school.

There are numerous suppliers of school meals nationwide with no one person or body holding the contract to provide meals for the programme.  My Department provides the funding directly to the schools, who are then required to procure the provision of the food in compliance with Government procurement rules and with relevant HACCP, Food Safety regulations and the Nutritional Standards for School Meals.  The Nutritional Standards for School Meals were developed by a working group led by the Health and Wellbeing Programme in the Department of Health, in consultation with Safefood and the Healthy Eating and Active Living Programme in the Health Service Executive.  Details on the type of food to be provided per the Nutritional Standards can be viewed gov.ie - School Meals (www.gov.ie).

In terms of assessing whether schools meet the requirements set out in the nutritional standards, schools are required to submit a sample menu with their application and detailed records at the end of each school year.  Expenditure on unhealthy food items is deducted from the funding allocation.

Schools associated with an ETB make an application for funding in their own right and funding is issued directly to the ETB bank account.  This funding is then distributed to the school on confirmation of the funding allocation by my Department.

My Department has not been informed of the termination of hot meals in any school approved for the current academic year and schools have recently received their second instalment of funding to cover the 22 weeks from January to June.

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.

I trust this clarifies the matter.