Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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442. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the estimated cost of increasing the school meals programme budget by 5%, 10%, 20% and 25%, respectively. [14768/23]

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 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 2023 has provided €94.4 million for the programme. The Government has recently approved an additional €14.5m to allow access to the Hot School Meals scheme for all remaining DEIS schools from September 2023.

The estimated cost of increasing the school meals programme budget by 5%, 10%, 20% and 25%, respectively is €5.4m, €10.9m, €21.8m and €27.2m respectively.

I am committed to continuing to expand the school meals programme and building further on the significant extension of the programme that has taken place in recent years. In this regard, I intend to roll out the Hot School Meals to all DEIS primary schools from September 2023. I will also bring forward proposals in the coming weeks on commencing the roll out of the Hot School Meals to non-DEIS primary schools.

In addition, the final report from the evaluation of the school meals programme was recently received and is currently being reviewed. This report will help to inform future decisions around this important programme.

I trust this clarifies the matter.