Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The current cost-of-living crisis is having a profound effect on many families. Inflation is having an impact on how far family budgets can stretch. While measures to reduce inflation have been taken, primarily by the ECB through interest rate hikes, they are adding to the outgoings for mortgage holders. For those renting, the costs are significant and in many cases bear little relation to the ability of families to put a roof over their heads while providing for their needs.

With pressures like these, exercising the fundamental right to education should not increase pressure on families further. Indeed, when it comes to third level, in many instances undergraduates face the very same high rental costs and increases in living expenses. Times are not easy and this must be recognised in the Government's treatment of the costs incurred in education. Traditionally, schoolbooks have been among the most expensive items for parents when it comes to the cost of children going back to school. As a party, we have long argued for schoolbooks to be provided free of charge. Successive Governments have resisted this. The pressure on families has got to such a stage that some, in order to spend on schoolbooks, have to cut back on other household expenditure, as if things were not bad enough for struggling families.

For many families, the approximate cost of primary schoolbooks, €101, is not easily come by. For families sending children to secondary school, the cost soars to €200, which must not be allowed to continue. This is not being said by Sinn Féin or others in opposition; it is in the report by Barnardos, which is backed up by the Irish League of Credit Unions.

At the moment, the Taoiseach is trying to make hay out of the proposed tax cuts, but if he put the taxes already paid by the people of Ireland to work for their benefit, he might actually make a difference for struggling families.

We call on the Government to abandon its plans to increase the student contribution charge, which I remind the Minister has been put in place to offset the reduction in core funding made in times of austerity. When third level students face rent prices never encountered before by students and when families are most limited in their ability to support them, we really need to see the planned increase in fees ditched. Furthermore, the Government must publish its plan to eliminate student fees for the coming years.

The Government makes much of its current employment figures. It speaks of how the knowledge base of our young workers contributes to these in no small way, but if it truly values the knowledge base and the skills that make Ireland an attractive place in which to do business, it will do all it can to ensure cost will not be a barrier to accessing further and higher education and assure families with primary and secondary students that at the start of the school year, schoolbooks costs will not yet again become another significant hit on household finances.

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