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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