Seán Sherlock
Question:90. Deputy Sean Sherlock asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the status of the roll-out of the school meals programme. [18482/20]
View answerWednesday, 29 July 2020
Questions (90)
Written answers
The school meals programme provides funding towards the provision of food to some 1,580 schools and organisations benefitting 250,000 children at a total cost of €61.6 million in 2020.
The objective of the scheme is to provide regular, nutritious food to children who are unable, due to a lack of good quality food, to take full advantage of the education provided to them. The programme is an important component of policies to encourage school attendance and extra educational achievement and coincides with the school year.
In recent years, entry to the School Meals Scheme has been confined to DEIS schools and schools identified as having levels of concentrated disadvantage, meaning that they would benefit from access to the School Meals Programme.
My Department confirmed that funding under the school meals programme would remain available to schools to allow them to continue to provide food for the duration of school closures and throughout the summer period until the start of the new academic year 2020/2021. Applications for extensions of funding for summer 2020 are currently being processed, as are applications for the 2020/2021 academic year for schools that opted not to continue provisions during the summer months.
As part of Budget 2019, it was announced that my Department would commence a pilot scheme from September 2019, providing hot school meals in primary schools at a cost of €1m for 2019 and €2.5m in 2020. The principal aim of this pilot scheme was to understand what works, and to learn how best the programme can be rolled out on a wider basis.
The pilot involves 37 schools benefitting 6,744 students for the 2019/2020 academic year. Officials from my department have visited all schools participating in the pilot to provide support and take feedback in relation to all aspects of the pilot. In general, the response to the pilot from teachers, parents and pupils has been very positive. Benefits identified include improved social skills through eating together and involvement by older pupils in distributing meals, the opportunity to try new foods, a change in eating habits from fast and unhealthy foods, and the guarantee of a hot meal during the day.
An evaluation of the hot school meals pilot is currently being undertaken to determine if the pilot has been successful. This evaluation is expected to be completed by the end of the summer.
Budget 2020 provided an additional €4 million in funding to extend the hot meals for children currently receiving the cold lunch option, which will allow my Department to extend the hot meals from September 2020 to an additional 35,000 children who currently receive the cold lunch option. A decision has been made to delay the extension of the hot meals to January 2021 due to Covid-19 restrictions.
Any decision to extend the current provision of school meals would need to be considered in a budgetary context.
Question No. 91 answered with Question No. 37.
Question No. 92 answered with Question No. 22.
Question No. 93 answered with Question No. 37.