Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to raise the issue of the school library service, SLS, which is available in every county. There are structures in place to provide school books to every national school in a county on a rotating basis. For example, the books purchased by the service in Galway are made available to all schools in the city and county. Every school is visited twice a year. They return books that have been read and they are provided with a new and different selection for the upcoming term. A number of reading projects run by the SLS have been of great benefit to schools, including the class novel scheme under which any school that wishes to read a class novel during a term can borrow up to 15 copies. The novels are written by well known authors and some are chosen to reflect aspects of the curriculum such as Irish history. Other projects included the Interschool Book Club, which forges links between schools, the Big Books project for infants and parents and the Reading Tree project.

The SLS has been in place in County Galway for 40 years. It has survived some lean and tough years and it would be a shame if all the hard work that was put into building up this service should be wasted if provision is not made in the Estimates. The school book grant provided by the Department of Education and Science amounts to €2.1 million for the entire State. It is a small sum in the context of the €8 billion budget of the Department. This resulted in an allocation of €117,000 for County Galway or €4.50 per child in 2008, which is a small percentage of the Department's budget. The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and local authorities more than match the grant of the Department of Education and Science, as they cover the salaries of professional librarians and the cost of library vans and book materials.

The grant was not available in 2009 and I would like it to be reintroduced in 2010. I hope the library service can be part of the smart school programme, under which €150 million will be provided for laptops and whiteboards. The restoration of the book grant for the SLS requires only €2 million. There is a danger with all the focus on the technology that we will forget about reading. Reading should be encouraged from a young age and reading for pleasure should not become a thing of the past. It is important that this facility be provided and, as a former teacher, it is important that we encourage both reading and writing. I used to welcome the library van to the school in which I taught and I hope that service will continue.

I had the privilege of serving as a Minister of State in the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and I had responsibility for libraries. I pushed hard for library development and I would be disappointed if, while this Department was promoting library services, the Department of Education and Science did not restore the book grant. I appeal to the Minister to restore the grant, to encourage both the reading of books from an early age and the rotation and exchange of books and to show that recreational reading is something we treasure in this country, particularly in our primary schools.

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