Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to introduce this Bill along with my colleague Deputy Ó Laoghaire. As we know, the cost of children returning to school is multifaceted. The most significant cost is the cost of school uniforms. Year in and year out, one consistent theme from parents across my constituency is that a white T-shirt is a white T-shirt regardless of what crest is put on the front of it. There are practical steps that can be taken to reduce this financial burden on families and they need to be taken as a matter of urgency. The cost of simply clothing your children to go to school is unaffordable and unnecessary. We need a new approach, we need to see all families benefit from that approach and we need to take a much more practical view of school uniforms and those additional uniforms that can be requested by some schools relating to extracurricular activities. They also need to be addressed. One significant step that can be taken is the introduction of those sewn-on school badges or iron-on school crests, which can reduce the cost significantly and open up a world of options to parents to purchase the school uniform from a variety of different sellers. At the moment, there is a significant restriction on where parents can buy school uniforms, crested school items in particular, and this needs to come to an end.

We also need to see schools reducing the frequency with which they change school uniforms to ensure that clothing that is still of good quality can be passed down between siblings and perhaps passed on to other families for future use. The cost of children returning to school this year has been to the forefront of many people's minds but this issue has been ongoing for a number of years. We need to take a number of steps to reduce back-to-school costs but this is one that will benefit parents both this year and long into the future.

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