Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have a couple of questions for the INTO. In his presentation Mr. McMahon states the scheme announced as part of budget 2014 was viewed as one driven not by the needs of pupils, parents and schools but by politics. He makes similar criticisms throughout his presentation. To be honest, I thought the presentation was political, entirely negative and one-sided. He did not, for example, take into account the fact that this committee had produced a report on back to school costs. Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin was rapporteur and committee members spent a lot of time working on the report. We organised numerous hearings which included presentations by the INTO. We also received numerous submissions. One of the recommendations made in the report was that the Department routinely survey schools in the schools census about book rental schemes in order that better data on the prevalence of such schemes could be maintained. We also recommended that it be mandatory for all schools to have a book rental scheme in place to reduce or eliminate the cost of schoolbooks for parents. We also said a five year template for the delivery of an entirely free schoolbook system, based on the UK model, should be produced. It was after our report was published that the Minister and the Department made their decision. I am not saying it was not flawed, but to say it was motivated by politics only is very unfair. This is a cross-party committee made up of Government and Opposition Deputies and Senators and we came up with recommendations.
As Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáinhas asked, how do we fund this initiative in the current economic climate, given the State's financial position?

The idea behind the Department's decision was to extend the scheme to all schools and, in particular, to target the schools that currently did not have a scheme. This involved making a budgetary choice and this was the dilemma. Politically, any Minister would love to have money to hand out to everybody, but hard decisions had to be made in regard to the scheme. I agree with Deputy Ó Ríordáin, in terms of the current situation, that the pots of money do not exist to do all the things we should do. How would the witnesses propose that we should proceed?