Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 13 January 2021
565. Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Social Protection if her Department will undertake a review of the school meals programme; if consideration will be given to rolling it out to all schools; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [44974/20]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe school meals programme provides funding towards the provision of food to some 1,557 schools and organisations benefitting 227,000 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.
In recent years entry to the school meals programme has been confined to DEIS schools in addition to schools identified by Department of Education and Skills as having levels of concentrated disadvantage that would benefit from access to the programme.
Prior to the introduction of DEIS in 2005, all schools and organisations that were part of one of a number of Department of Education and Skills’ initiatives for disadvantaged schools were eligible to participate in the programme, which included Breaking the Cycle, Giving Children an Even Break, the Disadvantaged Area Scheme, Home School Community Liaison and the School Completion Programme. These schools and organisations have continued to remain in the programme.
Participation in the scheme is entirely voluntary with the onus being on the individual eligible schools to make an application. Schools and organisations must reapply for funding in advance of each school year and are required to submit detailed records at the end of the school year. Funding is based on a rate of payment per meal, per child, per day.
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. Hot meals are paid at the rate of €2.90 per child per day.
Budget 2020 provided an additional €4 million in funding to extend the hot meals for children currently receiving the cold lunch option, which would allow DEASP to extend the hot meals to an additional 35,000 children. A decision was made to delay the extension of the hot meals to January 2021 because of the closure of schools due to the Covid-19 Pandemic from 13 March 2020. Budget 2021 has provided an additional €5.5m for this extension from January 2021 to 35,000 primary school children currently receiving the cold lunch option.
According to information contained on the Department of Educations and Skills website there are 3,240 primary schools and 723 secondary schools with a combined enrolment of 939,166 students (567,716 in primary schools and 371,450 in secondary schools).
There are 2,289 primary schools with a total enrolment of 406,654 students and 446 post primary schools with a total enrolment of 251,516 students that do not benefit from the scheme. If a breakfast/snack at 60c per child, per day, and a lunch at €1.40 per child, per day, were to be made available to all students in these schools, it would cost approximately €229m (€146m for primary schools and €83m for secondary schools) for a full school year.
Any extension of the scheme would have to be considered in a budgetary context.
I trust that this clarifies the position.
