Mr. Peter Mullan:

The INTO supports the view that all schools should be able to offer a book rental scheme to pupils. I do not believe we can force parents to avail of the scheme, but all schools should be able to offer it. I suggest the Department could engage in a five-year plan of capital funding for school books, while at the same time maintaining support for necessitous pupils. My guess is that with reasonable expenditure over five years of approximately €10 million per year, we would have book rental schemes in place. Then the amount of support that would need to be provided for necessitous pupils could be decreased. I suggest that if we could keep a twin-track approach going for approximately five years, this could be achieved. This would lead to a situation similar to that of other countries, which is what we would like to achieve. The disappointment with regard to the proposed scheme is that it will not lead us to that position.

The jury is very much out on the issue of e-books. We must remember that we deal with young children from four to 12 years of age. E-books are being introduced in second level schools and we are monitoring what is happening. We have seen significant cost increases in schools which have moved to e-books. I spoke with a parent this morning who told me the bill for her child who was going into second level was €850. This was for the iPad and the licence. Admittedly, this is for three years, but it is a significant up-front cost. We need to look at this issue very carefully and learn from other sectors.

In regard to book rental, there is a cost implication, but I believe we could capitalise the scheme over five years and that this would be a positive development for schools. Deputy Daly raised the issue of boards of management. These boards do their work well and do so on a voluntary basis, but much of the work falls on the school principal. Seventy-five percent of our principals are full-time teachers, but they are asked to take on overall responsibility for book rental and many other schemes. We have reached a stage at which we must say "Stop" in terms of pushing an additional workload on school principals. While they get help from many parents, who do significant voluntary work, the overall responsibility falls on the principal. We need to look at providing more time for principals or at reintroducing posts of responsibility in schools that have been badly hit by this.