Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I raise the issue because we are at the start of a school year. I raised the issue last year as well and said I was absolutely delighted that costs for school books in primary school have been taken away from parents. It should be the same across the entire school system. However, my major concern is that an industry developed around school books and the tab for that industry is now being picked up by the State. There is a cost element of school books but there is also a pollution element. We know that hundreds of thousands of books are dumped at the end of the school year. Should a new book be needed at the end of every year? Should siblings not be able to pass down their books? If we are going to take the step of providing free books, we need to put in place a system in which that is not abused. I know, for instance, that Eason's profits went down significantly with this new approach to school books in which the State picks up the tab because of the amount of money paid by parents or the State for these books. I ask that a system be put in place across all schools that they do not need new books on the curriculum unless there is a major change in the curriculum, which happens very rarely, to be honest, to prevent this kind of abuse of a system. I will not go on about it. The Minister of State has the general gist. I could provide loads of facts and statistics on the issue but, intuitively, we all know what the problem is. The whole system last year was not well thought through. It is the same thing with school transport. Just providing something for free does not address the underlying issue that we have a system in which each school gets to decide what school books are put on the curriculum. The majority of schools - I think it is something like 96% of them - offer a rental scheme in the school but that becomes defunct if you provide free books. Where is the environmental aspect? If people feel they can rent a book from a school or can get a free book, they will probably get the free book and then you are still left with the environmental cost of that.

In general, the principle is good but we need the policy to back it up. Unfortunately, the way in which our school system has developed is circular and involves individual schools making decisions. It is our job as policymakers to put a more generalised system in place to make sure every school is doing the same thing when it comes to something as fundamental as the environment.