Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)
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431. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the changes introduced to the hot school meals programme since 27 June 2020; and if she will detail the number of recipients, by county, benefitting from these changes, in tabular form. [31133/23]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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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.

Budget 2023 provided €94.4 million for the programme. The Government recently approved an additional €14.5m to allow access to the Hot School Meals scheme for all remaining DEIS schools from September 2023.

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.

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 last year, I announced that the access to the hot school meal option would be extended to the 282 newly designated DEIS primary schools from September 2022.

The number of recipients, by county, benefitting from these changes is detailed, by academic year, in the attached tabular statement.

Since my appointment as Minister for Social Protection, I have increased the number of schools with access to the Hot School Meal option from 37 to over 500. 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, I intend to roll out the Hot School Meals to all remaining DEIS primary and Special schools from September 2023, benefiting more than 60,000 children.

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. 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.

Tabular Statement

Table - Recipients by county benefitting from Hot School Meals 2019/2020 to 2022/2023