School Meals Programme

Tuesday, 26 July 2022

Questions (1194, 1195, 1284, 1285)

John Lahart

Question:

1194. Deputy John Lahart asked the Minister for Social Protection the estimated total cost of the school meals programme at primary and post-primary level. [39820/22]

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1195. Deputy John Lahart asked the Minister for Social Protection the estimated cost of providing either hot or cold meals to pupils in all schools at primary and post-primary level. [39821/22]

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Richard Boyd Barrett

Question:

1284. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Social Protection the estimated full-year cost of providing free school meals for all post-primary school pupils in public schools; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [41438/22]

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Richard Boyd Barrett

Question:

1285. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Social Protection the estimated full-year cost of providing free school meals for all primary school pupils in public schools; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [41439/22]

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Written answers

Minister for Social Protection

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1194, 1195, 1284 and 1285 together.

The school meals programme provides funding towards the provision of food to some 1,800 schools and organisations benefitting 290,000 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 €68.1 million was provided for the scheme in the 2022 Revised Estimates.

Funding under the school meals (local projects) scheme can be provided for breakfast, snack, lunch, dinner, hot meals and afterschool clubs and is based on a maximum rate per child per day, depending on the type of meal being provided.

In recent years, entry to the school meals programme has been confined to DEIS schools in addition to schools identified as having levels of concentrated disadvantage that would benefit from access to the programme.

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.

In Budget 2021, I announced 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. 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 for by each 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 provided for 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 children as referred to earlier. This has brought the number of children currently benefitting from a hot school meal to 54,266. In March 2022, the Minister for Education announced an extension of the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in School to an additional 284 primary and 38 post-primary schools from September 2022.

I have recently announced that the provision of the hot school meal option will be extended to all new DEIS primary schools and the cold lunch option to all new DEIS secondary schools at a full year cost of €26m and benefitting some 60,000 children. However, as 31 of these schools are already in receipt of funding, the additional cost of providing these options is €23.5m in a full year.

The estimated cost of providing a cold meal and a hot school meal free of charge every school day to every primary school student and post primary student is contained in Table 1 of the attached tabular statement.

I am committed to continuing to grow the school meals programme (in particular, hot school meals for DEIS schools) and building further on the significant extension announced. In this regard, I have commissioned an evaluation of the school meals programme to be undertaken in 2022 to inform future policy decisions on the scheme.

Any extension of the school meals programme or hot school meals beyond 2022 will need to be considered as part of the budgetary process.

I trust this clarifies the matter.

Tabular Statement

Table 1 – The estimated cost of providing a cold meal and a hot school meal to primary and post-primary schools;

School Type	Pupils	Cold Lunch	Hot School Meal
Primary	546,106*	€137m	€285m
Post Primary	391,698*	€90m	€187m
Total	937,804	€227m	€472m

*Department of Education enrolment figures 30th of September 2021

Question No. 1195 answered with Question No. 1194.