Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

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 provided €94.4 million for the programme. The Government 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 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.

Entry to the School Meals Scheme has been confined to DEIS schools in addition to schools identified by the Department of Education as having levels of concentrated disadvantage that would benefit from access to the School Meals Programme. The school referred to by the Deputy was identified by the Department of Education as having a level of disadvantage that could benefit from school meals and were approved for funding for breakfast since 2017. As they were a non DEIS school at this time their funding was capped.

In March 2022, the Minister for Education announced an extension of the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in School to an additional 320 schools from September 2022. In July 2022, I announced that the 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 allowed all pupils in the new DEIS schools to avail of one substantial meal for the additional budget provided.

The school referred to by the Deputy is among the newly designated DEIS schools in 2022 and was approved for the hot school meals option for its full enrollment of 188 pupils. In addition, they were able to retain the funding for breakfast at the capped amount. Schools are advised at the start of each academic year to take note of their allocation for each club and manage their expenditure accordingly.

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 remaining DEIS primary and Special schools from September 2023, benefiting more than 60,000 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 from 2024.

Any additional measures to expand the coverage of other meal options would have to be considered in a budgetary context.

I trust this clarifies the matter.