Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for picking this Topical Issue. I am a little disappointed that the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn could not be here himself but I see from the monitor that he is addressing the other House. I want to talk about the school book rental scheme and the funding available to schools to establish and maintain them. The recent budget announcement of €15 million over the next three years for new schemes is a very positive measure, equivalent to approximately €100 for every pupil who participates.

We all know how expensive buying school books can be and it is particularly expensive if one has two or three children going to school at the same time. It can cost up to €100 per year per child to get books for the school year, not including the cost of uniforms, shoes, sports equipment and the other things a school pupil needs daily. A school book rental scheme can help parents because it reduces the costs. In addition to the money the school book rental scheme gets from the Government, parents pay on average €40 per child per year to participate in a scheme so an average a family will save approximately €60 per year per child for taking part in this scheme. It is very good news for hard-pressed families.

If a school has no scheme it can apply for funding to help establish one. That is all really good news and we all welcome that. The problem is that funding is not available for schools that have already set up a scheme. A school could have a scheme that operates for only half the classes in the school or is running on a shoestring budget, but it cannot get extra funding. I will give some examples. Gaelscoil na Mí in Ashbourne established a scheme in 2011 through parents' donations. Now it cannot get access to this new funding. The people in that school are extremely worried that they may have to stop the scheme or take funding from another part of the school budget, which is under pressure.

St. Patrick's national school in Stamullen established a scheme last year and because it had limited funds, raised from parents, it established it only for children from junior infants up to fourth class with no scheme in operation for children in fifth or sixth class. When they heard the announcement they wrote to me, as follows:

It was great to hear that additional funding has been allocated to establish a school book rental scheme in budget 2014 but now I learn that Stamullen is not acceptable as this. As a result I now feel that I have actually hurt the school by putting in so much work last year and making the school ineligible to apply for additional funding even though we have only a partial scheme set up covering the years junior infants to fourth year. We would have all been better off now if we had done nothing at all last year.

That is the feeling out there. People are thinking they went out, tried to better their communities and their children's education and as a result they get no reward at all for it. What can we do to help schools such as those in Ashbourne and Stamullen which have half schemes or which are running schemes on very tight budgets? Can the Department consider the possibility of extra funding being put into schemes such as these?

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