The Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairí Quinn T.D., is announcing that all primary schools who currently operate a school book rental scheme will be able to benefit from the €15 million School Book Rental Scheme Fund which he secured as part of Budget 2014. 

Last October, the Minister announced that the €15 million fund would be targeted specifically at primary schools who did not currently operate a book rental scheme.  The Department of Education has received applications from approximately 400 such schools to date.

531 schools who previously indicated that they did not have book loan schemes were invited to apply for the funding.  Of these, three quarters of these schools have now applied. 
DEIS schools will receive €150 per child and non-DEIS schools will receive €100 per child in seed capital funding over the next two years to establish book rental schemes.  This will cost approximately €6.7 million and is expected to benefit more than 63,000 pupils and their families. 

Minister Quinn has now decided that the balance of the fund, some €8.3 million, will be divided among all other primary schools that currently operate book rental schemes, in 2015 and 2016.  These schools are expected to receive a total of €18 per pupil or €20 in DEIS schools over those two years.  This is on top of the annual book grant of €15 million which is paid to all schools on a per pupil basis. This forms part of the Minister’s wider agenda to tackle the high costs of going to school for parents. 

“Every primary school in the country has now the opportunity to benefit from the School Book Rental Scheme funding we secured through the proceeds of the sale of the national Lottery.”
“When I first announced this scheme which targeted only primary schools who were not operating a Book Rental Scheme, many of the other schools voiced their concern at being left out, despite the hard work of many parents and teachers to establish such schemes.”
“I indicated that after the initial first round of funding was allocated that we could examine the scheme again and I am delighted that we will be able to provide an extra boost to these other schools which should allow them to expand or replace some books on their own schemes.”
“Every primary school has now been given the opportunity to benefit from the funding I secured for book rental schemes.  I believe that all parents should have access to a school book rental scheme enabling them to significantly reduce the costs of sending a child to school,” said the Minister. 

€5 million in seed capital funds for approximately 400 schools to establish book rental schemes will be distributed later this month in order to give the schools time to do so for the next school year, using the Guidelines issues by the Department in January 2013.  The balance of the funding, €1.7 million, will be distributed to qualifying schools in 2015.
Provisions are also being made for new primary schools due to open in September to receive this funding.  All other primary schools that currently operate book rental schemes will receive their share of the funding in 2015 and 2016. 

Source: DOE Press Release

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