Mr. Geoffrey Browne:

I will come back in on a number of points. I will not talk about school uniforms, as the matter has been addressed at this stage.

We have just finished running our helpline for students. Over eight days we received just short of 2,000 calls, with 4,000 or 5,000 various queries, and many of them fully accord with what Senator Ruane has described. These are real-life situations and difficulties that many families find themselves facing, not anomalies or rarities.

We regularly receive similar calls about, as it is described, the "voluntary" contribution. The word "voluntary" should not be used any more; it is almost compulsory. Even if a child's parents or guardians get an exemption from paying into this voluntary scheme, the child may not get a school locker. It is not a straightforward case of "Do not pay it and you will still get everything". We see many cases where children are carrying what I can only liken to suitcases full of books to and from school every day, and it is sad to see this going on in this day and age. If I were inclined to read a Mills & Boon novel, I could get it on my phone. Why can students not get their science books or French books on their mobile devices? Surely in the 21st century we can achieve that, and it would have a twofold benefit: it would reduce the weight of schoolbags for young people, and surely it could also be provided at a lower cost than that of printing these big manuscripts. I assume the books are in digital format for printing so I call on the Department and the various stakeholders to address this.

Many other costs that we have not had an opportunity to discuss are equally crippling for families in Ireland. I refer particularly to school transport costs and the cost of after-school childcare for parents. In most scenarios both parents or guardians must work to achieve a basic standard of living. I would also draw attention to the back-to-school allowances which families are entitled to apply for. However, last night I looked up the eligibility thresholds for these allowances and they are ridiculously low. People think of families in which both parents or guardians are working as well off or something. This is simply not the case. We often refer to them as the working poor, and these people are ineligible for such grants.

I will pick up on one last point. This was evident from the helpline that the National Parents Council has just run. It was geared towards senior-cycle students who had just received their results and potential CAO offers. We hear from many families that they are just not considering sending their children to universities or colleges in the likes of Dublin, etc., because they simply cannot afford to send their children to the major cities.

The threshold is similar to those for the back to school allowances and is far too low. Families are ineligible. There may be two parents or guardians on minimum wage with huge mortgage costs and costs of living yet they cannot apply for these third level grants. It affects all areas of society.

On the capitation grants, these should not just be reinstated to 2010 levels but incrementally increased yearly thereafter. Investment in education is the best investment we could ever make in this country and it should be followed up. Equally, and I say this without any examples here today, we need to make sure that this capitation grant money is being best spent and that value for money is being achieved by schools in how they spend the various income sources and the grants. If we can minimise the cost on parents then they can concentrate on what they should be doing which is funding extracurricular activities outside of school for their children.