Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 7 December 2021
383. Deputy Thomas Pringle asked the Minister for Social Protection the reason no school in Ballymun, Dublin 11, is included in the hot meals programme given that all schools in the area are DEIS schools; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [60520/21]
View answerThe school meals programme provides funding towards the provision of food to some 1,506 schools and organisations benefitting 230,000 children. The objective of the programme is to provide regular, nutritious food to children who are unable, due to 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.
A budget of €65.1 million has been provided for the scheme in 2021.
Participation in the scheme is entirely voluntary with the onus being on the individual eligible schools to make an application and to administer the programme in accordance to the guidelines. Funding is strictly for food items only, which must be of suitable nutritional quality.
As part of Budget 2019, funding was provided for 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 pilot involved 37 schools benefitting 6,744 students for the 2019/2020 academic year and was aimed primarily at schools with no onsite cooking facilities.
Budget 2021 provided an additional €5.5m to extend the provision of hot school meals to an additional 35,000 primary school children, currently receiving the cold lunch option. Invitations for expressions of interest were issued to 705 primary schools (612 DEIS and 93 non-DEIS) in November 2020. Some 28 schools in the Dublin 9 and Dublin 11 areas were invited to submit an expression of interest. There were no expressions of interest received from the schools in Ballymun.
A total of 281 (256 DEIS and 25 non-DEIS) expressions of interest were received in respect of 52,148 children.
The 35,000 places were allocated to each local authority area based on the number of children applied by local authority as a percentage of the total number. A minimum of one School for each Local Authority area was selected. Thereafter, a process of random selection was used for each area.
Budget 2022 is providing for the hot school meals to be extended from January 2022 to the 81 DEIS schools that submitted an expression of interest but were not selected in the extension to 35,000.
I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.
