Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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152. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she will extend the school meals programme to all schools by 2023; and if she will ensure that these meals are of a high standard and offer both hot and cold school meals. [14163/23]

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.

Funding under the school meals 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. These meals must meet the nutritional standards for the school meals programme. 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.

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 and special schools from September 2023, benefiting 64,500 children. 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.