Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am taking this debate on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn. I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss school book rental schemes. As the Deputy mentioned, yesterday the Minister launched the guidelines for developing textbook rental schemes in schools. The guidelines provide practical advice for primary and post-primary schools on how rental schemes can be established and operated. The aim of the guidelines is to help as many schools as possible to start such book rental programmes.

The publication of the guidelines follows a survey of schools by the Department's inspectorate last year. It had a 99% response rate at primary level and showed that 76% of primary schools operated a book rental scheme. At second level, the response rate was lower, at 44%. Of the 44% which responded, 88% of those in the VEC sector and 73% of those in the community and comprehensive sector operated a book rental scheme. These results show that we have a good foundation on which to build a scheme across the country. I hope schools not yet operating book rental schemes will be encouraged to use the guidelines introduced yesterday. If they do, this will result in substantial savings for parents. Schools which already have rental schemes can save parents up to 80% of the cost of buying new books.

A special guide for parents is also being published to inform them how the schemes operate and how they can help schools to establish and run them. The Minister has been very clear in his ongoing support for book rental schemes. All of us who are parents know how expensive textbooks can be and what a burden the cost places on already hard-pressed families at the start of every school year.

A key priority for the Minister is to continue to take steps to tackle the costs associated with school attendance. The publication of the guidelines builds on other steps taken in an attempt to reduce the burden on families such as protecting the budget for school book grants at €15 million in the past two years, despite economic pressures. The Minister has consulted widely on the guidelines, including working closely with the National Parents Council at primary and post-primary level, the Society of St. Vincent De Paul and Barnardos, to discuss ways of reducing costs for parents. These consultations resulted in a commitment from the Irish Educational Publishers Association to limit the publication of new editions and maintain editions of books in print unchanged for at least six years. The publishers also gave assurances that they would sell books for rental schemes to schools at substantial discounts.

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