The School Meals Programme provides funding towards the provision of food services to some 1,600 schools and organisations benefitting 260,000 children. The objective of the 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.
My Department provides the funding for the School Meals Programme directly to the school and it is the responsibility of each individual school to administer the programme in their school. Funding under the school meals (local projects) scheme can be provided for breakfast, snack, cold lunch, dinner, hot school meals and afterschool clubs and is based on a maximum rate per child per day, depending on the type of meal being provided.
Budget 2023 provided €94.4 million for the programme. In February, the Government approved an additional €14.5m to allow access to the Hot School Meals scheme for all remaining DEIS primary schools and special schools from September 2023. The full year cost for 2024 of this measure is €38m.
There are 235 DEIS secondary schools with 104,000 pupils. The cost to extend the hot school meals to all secondary schools is €55m in a full year.
The school meals programme operates for 36 weeks of the year in respect of primary schools and 33 weeks in respect of post primary schools. During the Covid-19 pandemic funding to schools was further extended to allow schools who chose to continue to provide food during the Easter holidays, summer periods and Christmas holidays. The school meals programme has been operating as normal in schools since schools reopened at the end of August 2021 and there is no plan to extend outside the normal school calendar.
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. In this regard, as part of significant plans to extend the Hot School Meals to all children in the coming years all remaining primary schools have been contacted and have been asked to submit an expression of interest form if their school is interested in commencing the provision of hot school meals. Expressions of interest forms were received from over 900 non DEIS schools in respect of 150,000 children. From 2024, I intend commencing the roll-out of Hot School Meals to all remaining primary schools on a phased basis.
I trust this clarifies the matter.
