Ms Áine Lynch:

On working with boards of management to address the issue, at primary level the first thing we need to do is to consider how many books children need. When we have done this, we can look at boards of management which are ultimately responsible for policies in schools. All schools have health and safety and risk management policies, the mechanisms through which boards of management can address the issue. The development of a book list is the responsibility of the class teacher. As such, class teachers need to be educated on the non-educational implications. They need to consider issues such as the size of a book when they are drawing up a list for six year olds, for example. We must look at textbook requirements at primary level and then work with boards of management on the issue.

I would be very cautious about taking the legislative route because if we were enforcing legislation, we would potentially be criminalising people. Are we going to criminalise the parent or the school teacher? We spoke about children's responsibilities too. I am not sure that is the way to go to reduce the weight of schoolbags. Educating and supporting parents and teachers in making better choices are much better ways to go.

On a parent's responsibility to ensure his or her child has a suitable backpack, the comments section of our survey showed that some parents were buying very expensive, specially designed, ergonomic backpacks made in Germany. We must understand the bigger question of the cost of going to school. While parents have a certain responsibility, specially designed backpacks come at a huge cost and are beyond the financial ability of many parents.

It is very important that the voices of children are heard on this issue. We do have mechanisms to survey children, but we just did not have time to do so in advance of this meeting. There would be no harm in providing manual handling training. When we asked in our survey if parents or their children would benefit from receiving such training, a number of parents said training was not the issue; they said the sheer weight of the schoolbag relative to the size of the child was the problem. When one is talking about six or seven year old children, the issue is not how they lift the schoolbag but the fact that it is just too heavy. While I would not be against providing information on lifting and carrying, the actual weight of schoolbags must be addressed, particularly for very small children.