Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 394 and 395 together.

The objective of the School Meals 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. Following the expansion of the programme in recent years, some 2,600 schools and organisations, covering 443,000 children are now eligible for funding.

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. The roll out of the Hot School Meals to all remaining DEIS primary and Special schools began in September 2023, benefiting more than 60,000 children. The processing of applications is currently still ongoing; however at present of the 966 DEIS primary schools eligible for hot school meals, currently 66% have the programme up and running to date in this 2023-2024 academic year. We will have final figures in the next few weeks.

As part of this significant expansion plan, the remaining primary schools were contacted last year and requested to submit an expression of interest form if their school was interested in commencing the provision of hot school meals. Expressions of interests were received from over 900 primary schools in respect of 150,000 children and late last year these schools were invited to participate in the Hot School Meals Programme from April 2024. The closing date for submitting completed applications is 1st March 2024. There will be an opportunity for other primary schools who had subsequently expressed an interest, to do so formally later this year.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.