Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 18 October 2022
544. Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Social Protection the reason a school (details supplied) has not been approved for the hot meal scheme following a successful trial run; if this decision will be urgently reviewed particularly in view of the cost-of-living crisis; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [52030/22]
View answerThe school meals programme provides funding towards the provision of food to some 1,700 schools and organisations benefitting 260,000 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.
Budget 2022 provided €68.1 million for the programme with an additional €9m provided to allow access to all new DEIS schools from September 2022.
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 children for the 2019/2020 academic year and was aimed primarily at schools with no onsite cooking facilities
In Budget 2021, I announced that 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 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 provided 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 children as referred to earlier. Every DEIS school that submitted an expression of interest to be included in the hot school meals extension announced in Budget 2021 are now receiving funding for hot school meals.
In March 2022, the Minister for Education announced an extension of the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in School to an additional 322 schools from September 2022. In July, I 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 benefitting some 60,000 children at an additional cost of €9m in 2022.
Invitations were issued to the 284 new DEIS primary schools to apply for the hot meal option and the 38 new DEIS secondary schools to apply for the cold lunch option following my announcement.
The school referred to by the Deputy did not submit an expression of interest for the extension of hot school meals in 2021 nor are they one of the new DEIS schools announced that received an invitation to apply for the hot school meals option from September 2022.
Officials from my Department have responded to communications from the school directly regarding this matter and have outlined this selection process. The school has also been assured that they remain eligible to receive funding for the breakfast and the cold lunch.
I am committed to continuing to expand the school meals programme and building further on the significant extension of the programme in recent years. In this regard, I commissioned the evaluation of the school meals programme to review all elements of the programme. The final report is due to be completed in November 2022 and will be published thereafter.
I trust this clarifies the matter.
