Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 25 July 2023
1008. Deputy Kathleen Funchion asked the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the cost to roll out the hot school meals programme to all registered early years and SAC services nationally. [36081/23]
View answerAll full day early learning and childcare services (ELCs) are currently obliged to provide hot meals; part time services also provide meals and snack with parents providing lunch boxes in most sessional services.
The school meals programme is delivered by the Department of Social Protection. The current payment for a hot school meal is €3.20. It is estimated that there is approximately 200,000 children enrolled in early learning and childcare settings.
Assuming a 38 week term time delivery cycle, this would cost approximately €121m. To note this figure only relates to the provision of food and does not account for any staffing or infrastructural that may arise. Such requirements would vary widely from service to service.
It also does not account for the fact that hot meals in full-times services are currently included in fees which are subsidised through the National Childcare Scheme.
A pilot is currently underway to test meal provision in part time and sessional services. This pilot is one of a range of measures being tested under First 5 the Whole of Government Strategy for Babies, Young Children and their Families to help tackle early childhood poverty and to support children’s health and development and is a pre-cursor to and will inform part of a wider plan on responses to supporting children living with disadvantage. Informed by recommendations in Partnership for the Public Good, the wider plan will provide services with a proportionate mix of universal and targeted supports to support children and families’ accessing their services who are experiencing disadvantage.
The pilot was rolled out to services in areas of concentrated disadvantage as part of the planning for my Department’s Equal Participation Model. Pobal is supporting the delivery and evaluation of the pilot project, which will report in August.
The findings of the pilot will inform the potential future development of a meal provision scheme.
