Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Deputy sharing his experiences of the Gaelscoil. I visited it myself and I have seen at first hand the excellent operation. I am very pleased to hear of the initiative he referenced. As he noted, we have already secured €5 million and it is very much the ambition of the Department to run this as a pilot. It is not before time. It can be an invaluable resource to the schools. I do want to acknowledge that great work happens every day in schools in terms of the whole wellbeing space. The Deputy referenced the existence of a wellbeing post and it would be my ambition for that to be the case we see replicated across the country. These are the first and tentative steps we are taking in this direction around supporting the good practice that exists in so many of our schools by putting in the resources in terms of counselling. Work is being done on the pilot and how it will be run out. It will include a variety of types and sizes of schools and all of that. Turning to school transport, again I welcome the positive points made and the Deputy is 100% right. Previous Deputies have also referenced this but the more we can do to take more cars off the road, the more enormous the benefit will be. That is a given. As I said earlier, we will be looking at every possible opportunity in terms of widened criteria and investigating and interrogating criteria. Regarding the schoolbooks, I take the point. It is an important initiative for our schools. I made reference earlier that we are beginning in primary school as a first step and it is my ambition, if budgetary considerations allow, that we move to post-primary. Engagement with publishers, retailers and every education stakeholder is envisaged to be part of the schoolbook scheme and its roll-out. There is an opportunity for everybody to be part of the system in advance of the roll-out. I am well aware of the other point the Deputy made about book revisions where it could be a stanza or this and that. There is and should be an understanding that the minimum alteration in a book should not determine that a new edition of a book needs to be published. There is engagement and will be further engagement between the Department and those in that field to ensure the maximum potential will be given to use and reuse a book. This is the world in which we now live. It is very important that the maximum usage of a book is provided for. I absolutely hear the point and it is a fair point.