Aindrias Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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468. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the number of school children now in receipt of hot meals, by county, in tabular form. [19340/24]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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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. As part of this significant expansion plan, all 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 8th April 2024. The remaining Primary Schools who have not yet joined the scheme will be able to express an interest to receive Hot School Meals from September 2024. My Department is currently contacting them by email to notify them of the Expression of Interest process.

The number of school children now in receipt of hot meals, by county basis are listed in the following tabular statement as requested. This figure is increasing daily to reflect newly processed applications.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.