Ms Audrey Deane:

We want parents to be partners in education. We agree with Mr. Finlay of Barnardos and are quite appalled at the level of autonomy schools have. Up to €60 million of taxpayers' money goes towards schoolbooks to be dealt with in any discretionary way that a principal may see fit. There is good practice and bad practice. In some cases children are parading their poverty and in others there are very innovative, comfortable, confidential, discreet ways of doing things. There is a spectrum of ways of doing things, but it should not be like this. This is a small country with a limited number of schools. Let us just get on with this and find some solutions to this problem. As far as we are concerned, parents need to be a partner and do not need to continue to be at the receiving end of notes in schoolbags stating it will cost €450 for this iPad, €600 for this, €200 for that or whatever. This is not the way to have an adult partnership relationship when it comes to providing education for our cherished children.

All our organisations proposed solutions to the Minister on the issue of schoolbooks. We accept and we are party to the implementation of the guidelines, but we do not believe they go far enough. School principals cannot continue to have autonomy over whether to establish a schoolbook rental scheme because too much money is at stake. We are quite unhappy at the continuing frequency of additions and changes. We accept the publishers were forced into a new protocol but we know they continue to do deals with schools. Prior to the introduction of the protocol they had already different discounts for different schools. We do not believe that represents the way forward.

The schoolbook market is worth €60 million and we are not trying to reduce jobs or be anti-growth. However, we believe we need ministerial leadership to show there is a way that will be parent focused and not profit focused or publisher focused. We need to see some real solutions there and we want to be part of that. Until very recently there was a hands-off approach on the part of the Department of Education and Skills and it is not enough to throw our hands collectively in the air, ask what we can do and say that schools can decide what they want to do. That is not a viable option.

We are also very concerned that in the parent body there is a low awareness that taxpayers' money is going into schoolbooks. To date they have not had much understanding that they really should be asking school principals why they do not have a schoolbook solution. We understand that there are - particularly from our Labour Party colleagues - some ideas around this. We will stand beside them and work with them

Uniforms represent another large expenditure which does not need to be the case. It is good that all of our organisations got together with all the other leader organisations in education - some 13 organisations in all. We put our heads together and came up with a very simple two-page document to request school boards of management to review the school policy. This is solution focused and represents partnership working in action. I was lucky enough to meet the Minister for Education and Skills on his way up the stairs so he has a copy in his briefcase as we speak. This is the way to work in future - find solutions, work collaboratively and get to the outcome we want, which is less expense for parents. It is over to the members of the committee and we look forward to working with them in the future on these most important issues.