Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Families are being desperately squeezed by the cost-of-living crisis, especially the back-to-school costs that so many are facing. We saw a credit union survey this morning showing the cost per child being between €1,100 and €1,500. I spoke with a mother this morning who is budgeting for the school term ahead. She tells me that the cost of sending her two children to school this September has risen by €1,500 compared with this time last year. This is an enormous increase for any family. Amid rising costs of food, fuel, transport, childcare and housing, this price increase will have serious implications and ramifications for her household budget and the budgets of many households across the country. The credit unions told us that about one third of families go into debt to pay the cost of being back to school. The mother I spoke with joked that between the cost of returning to school and other rising costs, her credit union's loans department will be on speed dial for the rest of this year.

There were welcome concessions from the Government on back-to-school costs last night but they are simply not enough. There was no radical move to introduce the free school books scheme that my colleague, Deputy Ó Ríordáin, proposed. It would cost €40 million but would make a significant difference to many families. There was no move to increase eligibility for the back-to-school allowance, which could be done with the stroke of a pen and would make a real difference. There was no move for real reform of the outdated school transport system either. We need a bigger vision with more substantive change. We have called for a real cost-of-living budget, not one which will introduce mere piecemeal reform. We welcome the date being brought forward, but as my colleague, Deputy Nash, said, it is really a token exercise, because it has only been brought forward by two weeks. We have called for more targeted measures to be introduced now to ensure that families and households have excellent supports as they go through that critical time when children go back to school. Instead, we see suggestions that the Government will introduce vote-winning tax cuts at the expense of real cost-of-living measures to support hard-pressed families and households.

Will the Minister avoid skirting round the edges and make real, substantive changes in the budget, based on a practical way of improving conditions for many families and households? We know the cost-of-living crisis is not an abstract concept. It is felt by households across the country, including households which had incomes which, this time last year, were sufficient and adequate to meet their household expenses and bills, yet they are now facing a desperate situation where they simply cannot afford and are dreading going back to school.

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