Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
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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.

Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Hannigan for raising this issue and I welcome the opportunity to clarify the position. The Minister, Deputy Quinn, and I are very conscious that the cost of textbooks is a considerable burden on families. We believe that participation in book rental schemes offers the best opportunity to reduce that burden. Schools which already have rental schemes can save parents up to 80% of the cost of buying new books. Since his appointment, the Minister, Deputy Quinn, has attempted to take steps to increase participation across the country in book rental schemes.

In January 2013, the Minister launched the Guidelines for Developing Textbook Rental Schemes in Schools. These guidelines provide practical advice to 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 book rental programmes. The publication of the guidelines followed a survey of schools by the Department in 2011. This had a 99% response rate at primary level, and showed that 76% of primary schools already operate a book rental scheme. These results show that we have a good foundation to build on across the country, especially at primary level. We can achieve a position where every primary school has a book rental scheme in operation in the 2014-2015 school year.

Budget 2014, as Deputy Hannigan indicated, provided additional funding which will involve an investment of €15 million to support the establishment of book rental schemes in primary schools that do not currently operate them. The Department will provide €5 million in seed capital per annum over a three-year period to such schools. The Department will continue to provide a book grant as usual to all primary schools. This grant can be utilised for the purposes of updating or expanding a school's existing book rental scheme. I commend the schools that have used the book grant to help build up book rental schemes over the years. Their efforts mean the high costs of books is being significantly reduced for parents.

At the Minister, Deputy Quinn's request the National Parents' Council surveyed the views of its members about currently operating book rental schemes. Parents have reported that where book rental schemes operate, they are open to all parents in 95% of cases and that the cost per child is under €40 per year in a considerable majority of schools. Perhaps most tellingly the survey has found that 93% of parents believe that book rental schemes help with the costs of educating a child. Ensuring that book rental schemes are available not just to some parents but to all parents must therefore clearly be our aim. I understand that it feels unfair to those schools that have invested time, energy and money to establish such schemes, that they now cannot benefit from the additional funding which was secured as part of the budget. It is unfair, but equally, the status quo was deeply unfair on many parents.

Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
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Did the Minister of State say it is unfair?

Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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Yes, it is unfair, absolutely, but equally, the status quo was deeply unfair on the many parents who had no access whatsoever to book rental schemes and who needed support to establish them. That is what this measure sets out to do.

Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
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I thank the Minister of State for his honesty and his response. I agree with him that this is a very good scheme but I also agree that the way it is applied is unfair. I am very disappointed with the tenet of the response. We are all in politics because we believe it to be in the interests of people to work on their behalf. Politics is the art of the possible and if the Department says its own scheme is unfair I cannot believe we cannot look again and try to make it fair. I realise this has probably landed on the Minister of State's desk very recently and he may not have been aware of it in the past but, bearing in mind that he agrees with me that the current situation is unfair on schools such as the ones I named, St. Patrick's national school in Stamullen and Gaelscoil na Mí in Ashbourne, I ask him to re-examine this.

Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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Perhaps unusually I am very aware of this issue because I have discussed it at length with the Minister, Deputy Quinn. Recently in the Dáil the Minister and I answered several questions on the operation of the scheme and we both pointed out that it was unfair but, in the context of the resources available to us, it is the most that can be done now. If more resources were available to us within Government or the Department we would have extended this support beyond those schools which did not have a scheme in place already. To a certain extent, with the limited resources available to us, we are trying to level the playing field, to bring in all the final schools that have no scheme whatsoever in operation and to support them in establishing that scheme.

We hope that in the future, when we will hopefully have more resources available to us, we will be able to go back and support those schools which took the initiative and made the commitment and effort to put in place some kind of scheme. For the moment, we have an unfair decision, but the best possible decision in light of the resources available to us. It was perhaps even more unfair to parents who had no access whatsoever to any book rental scheme and it was those, at this point in time, we sought to support but we hope to support all the others in the future when resources become available.