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EDUCATION MINISTER NORMA Foley has said that relationships between schools and local bookshops don’t have to be damaged by the free schoolbooks scheme, which some booksellers say has had adverse effects on business.
It garnered significant criticism from sellers, dozens of whom wrote to the Minister expressing concern about a guideline that requires schools to get quotes from three different shops and choose the cheapest.
The scheme, first introduced for primary schools in 2023 and to be expanded to some secondary school years from this September, aims to reduce financial pressure on parents.
Speaking today, Minister Foley said the Department of Education consulted all stakeholders when implementing the scheme, including publishers and sellers.
The Government has spent €68 million on the scheme this year, but the figure is likely to decrease in the coming years, as schools can reuse some of the textbooks purchased.
Minister Foley said that the scheme is “quite a significant lifting of the burden” of back to school on parents, as it not only covers textbooks and workbooks, but novels, dictionaries and homework journals as well.
She added: “The existing relationship that a school may well have with booksellers or the local book store or whatever, that relationship should continue should they so wish.”
This runs contrary to the understanding among some schools and booksellers.
The Department conducted a review of how primary schools have used the ring-fenced funds, the results of which are due to be published this month. Schools had been asked to acquire quotes from three suppliers and to choose the most cost-effective, and schools randomly selected for the review may be required to prove they did so.
Bookselling Ireland today released a statement calling on the Department to clarify the guidelines and encourage schools to consider factors other than cost, such as sustainability and quality of service.
“Since the Free School Books Scheme was rolled out in April 2023, there have been a number of bookshop closures, including seven closures between October and December 2023,” the representative group said.
“All of these bookshops cited the free school book scheme as a factor in their decision to close.
“Margins on schoolbooks are very slim for bookshops, but the increase in footfall brought by school book sales during the summer months made it worthwhile. With this footfall removed, more bookshop closures are inevitable.”
The Journal revealed last month through a Freedom of Information request that booksellers and other stakeholders have been contacting the minister, Taoiseach and other government figures about the scheme for two years.
“As a former teacher, I welcomed the initiative, but as a schoolbooks family shop owner, I have watched in dismay at how the initiative has been implemented,” one owner of a family-run business said in a letter.
They described how they had had to let eight staff go last summer, as the shop couldn’t compete with larger suppliers. They said that two full-time staff had spent seven weeks completing quotes for schools, only to not be chosen by any.
Another owner said the scheme had created an all-or-nothing industry, where shops have to scale-up quickly to fulfil orders for a whole area or miss out on sales altogether.
It is understood that a national tender for schoolbooks was under consideration by Government at one point, as it would guarantee the lowest possible price.
However, it was decided that this would have been administratively laborious, as millions of books would have had to be distributed by the start of term, and Government thought it would put further strain on small businesses.
Ultimately, Government decided to allow schools to tender for books themselves.
In order to reduce the number of bookshop closures resulting from this scheme, Bookselling Ireland called on the Government to introduce targeted supports that “recognise the cultural impact and importance of physical bookshops”. These include cultural vouchers, such as those used in other EU countries, to encourage young people to visit bookshops.
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Great! The resulting 0.002% reduction in the live register as a result will show we’ve broken the back of this recession. Not too sound to negative about the development of cloud computing, data centres etc. in Ireland, but they’re not really labour intensive enough to make any real impact on our unemployment crisis are they?
These jobs bring money into the country and keep well educated people here. It’s not really the case that hog tech jobs like these aren’t labour I tensive enough, it’s more the case that most job seekers aren’t well educated enough for jobs like these.
Fergal it’s not a matter of not being ‘well educated enough’ it is a matter of having the right set of skills and capabilities for the job. It is pretty much common knowledge that people differ in this respect. You can hardly suggest that a person with qualifications in accountancy or law, isn’t well educated enough. They are just well educated in a different area. Similarly the lab scientist with a PhD…
“Not too sound to negative…”. Well, I’m afraid it does sound negative.
This post is really frustrating: there is a small company out there trying hard to create employment (on any scale), and the first response of some people is just begrudery. This company could be the next Google, or it may not: either way, at least they’re trying, and making jobs in the process.
Great! Just not “news”.
While job creation is a big priority, the micro level reporting of every job lost or created in the country is plain daft. If anything it has the opposite impact on the intention behind the announcements as they often reduce morale. How about the jobs are created and everyone just gets on with it?
The Argos announcement earlier this week of “800 jobs” was ridiculous as well – if they were 800 permanent jobs, then maybe a worthy news item. But most of these jobs will be for a few weeks, then announced again as new jobs next year.
The only time, even in the local or regional press, in the UK that I read about jobs lost or created or the really big eye-catching projects or closures of very large factories. These stories smack of politicians desperate for votes and pats on the back. When mostly it is nothing to do with their actions.
There is a difference between between sceptism and begrudgery. Am all for keeping well educated and skilled people working and spending in this country and fair play to this company in particular. However, at a macro level, I just wonder how many jobs in reality will be created by the latest wave of IT industry developments, which in simple terms appears to be based around innovative ways for storing and managing data. Compare it to the early 90s when the arrival of Intel, Dell, Microsft etc created tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs. Not all rocket science positions, granted, but employment at a serious scale. Correct me if i’m wrong, but the employment potential from cloud computing, data centre devleopment etc appears to be only a fraction of this.
You stand corrected ;) cloud computing isn’t just data management and storage; its everything that the web is based on nowadays – look at Youtube and Facebook, Google Apps, and Salesforce – there are thousands of jobs that rotate around cloud computing in Ireland and new jobs becoming available every day.
The jobs and employment are there, the skills can be learned and as this is the way that technology is moving towards with more and more systems in the cloud, the jobs will continue to grow.
10 jobs is probably only on the hardware/infrastructure level. A well managed DC has a ratio of 250 to 500 servers to 1 staff. Of course if the end “customers” of those 250 servers are in Ireland, then there could – potentially – be a knock on creation of jobs if the customers choose to use Irish developers.
On the flip side, a badly designed and managed infrastructure would need as many as 1 support person for every 30 servers. These are mostly blades by the way, with attached storage – would require a highly disciplined support person rather than just high skill. There are numerous companies now providing such services from Ireland, including Amazon and IBM.
Well, I might no live or work in Ireland, I’m an IT freelance professional though and I would like to express this single question: How many local IT freelancers or small IT service companies will be out of business given the expansion of cloud computing service providers and their services being sold even broader than their country of installation?
How many of those 10 job places will be held next year, given that growing competition will enforce cloud computing service providers to reduce job seats rather than increasing them?
I have just created ten jobs by driving my car into the front of a supermarket.
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