Stephen, surely not??
Enda and friends have pledged that theyre all taking cuts, Oh this has shattered all my delusional thoughts.
Shafted…

Exactly schools need to relook at uniforms and not expect parents to pay €35 for 1 jumper

SO agree on this point. The whole school book system is a joke. I have 3 girls and recycle all their clothes and toys downwards. This year I have a child in Junior Infants. Next year her younger sister will be there. Not one single book will be reuseable. All have to go in bin.. Shocking waste.
Uniforms the same way. I will have to buy a new one for the younger child. Navy jumper in Dunnes or Tesco costs average 5 to 8 euros; but I will have to fork out 40 for the mandatory school one with encrypted crest.
There are so many things that could be done to make school a lot cheaper for families.

You are absolutely correct !!!

So true and an excellent idea about the e-readers.. This would save families so much money each year and make the cuts to child benefit etc far more bearable.

brill and then whose going to lose jobs then!

Oh right sorry.

Forget I said all that, let’s keep borrowing money so that we can push parents to the brink every September just to keep a couple of publishers with an unfair market advantage going. It’s not as if they could still produce the publications to the same high standard they have done, and sell them through online methods.

Jeez, I don’t know what I was thinking, my apologies fellow readers.

When I was in Primary and secondary school we had textbooks and copy books. The textbooks were bought second hand and the copybooks were bought in quinnsworth as cheap as possible.
Now my sister has 4 kids in primary and one in secondary. It’s all single use workbooks, they could just about afford it all when my brother in law was working, now it’s utterly ludicrous..

The move to workbooks was made because the text book printers were losing revenue to the second hand book sellers. So yeah, if the industry is artificially propped up then it’s going to fail eventually – have we not learned that lesson yet?

It is not good if anyone loses jobs, but other jobs could be created by the extra cash circulating in the economy.

You have no need to apologise Ryan, your comment was the sort of fresh thinking we could do with in government!

It was tongue in cheek, Shanti.

Anyway, I’d add to your gripe about the workbooks, in that the publications themselves change, not yearly but often enough that the hand me downs usually become obsolete at least once a cycle.

The only constant is change, and certain sectors of our society and economy seem to embrace it when it suits, and in the case of technological advantage, discard it when it does not.

I figured it was tongue in cheek Ryan, I was playing along – lost in text I’m afraid!

It could be an opportunity to create a new more environmentally friendly industry, one less reliant on paper and therefore saving trees and reducing carbon. CJ Fallon would probably still retain the monopoly over schoolbook production, but they could change them every year, charge less, and still make the same profit due to increases in the number of children and the reduced costs of production. The staff could up skill and new idea could be pushed forward, like you said, change. For the better, and better for children’s spinal health too – remember the weight of all those schoolbooks!!

And the year after that and year after that it is said that they looking to the next 7 years of more cuts

I feel sincerely sorry for you, youre caught in a trap.
Youre suffering and will suffer more, Id like to see some of the people who think this is all ok because ‘we all spent like no tomorrow’ etc..(who write knowing they have a pillow in the bank to sleep on) managing your plight.
However hard you work, you get hit..they have you strangled.

I appreciate your situation totally, I’m lucky enough to not have children but my income from work is severely limited. I consider myself lucky to be working, but completely appreciate what you are saying. If I made the comment that offended you then please accept my apologies.

One thing for sure… there wont be many turning 50 soon!!

Not all non nationals are out of work, or clamming any benefit from the government. Many are skilled workers who speak more than one language and therefore have jobs that couldn’t be done by other people. And these non nationals spend most of their income back in the economy, paying rent, buying food and all. So better not to point fingers before knowing what you are talking about.

What’s a “non national”?? I don’t know anyone, in Ireland, that is not a national of somewhere. Ignorant terminology by an ignorant individual within an uneducated comment.

Thanks Niamh (and Lean) – amended now.

They cannot claim for children not resident in the country – it is pure tabloid media hype, scapegoat comes to mind… There are more Irish people fiddling the system than foreign nationals, why are we always so reluctant to point the finger at ourselves?

Or rioting…

What if you had the kids before the EU payed your employer to move to another section of the EU?? You don’t really get to hand the kids back just because you lost your job, nor would you want to.
If you’re on state aid and you keep getting pregnant then yes, I totally take your point.. But in the current climate we can’t rely on those stereotypes anymore..

I am referring to people eternally on state aid and keep popping out kids.. NOT someone who has kids and loses their job

That’s cool, it’s just there’s been some other far more blinkered comments on here the past few weeks..

Hey not all of us spent like no tomorrow some if us were extremely good with their money but now pay the brunt, did not get heavily in dept or even had a credit card nor went on a holiday

Utter ‘Bullshit’ to state that ‘We all!’
Speak for yourself. Youre very insulting.
Not everyone had the funds to do it in the first place, obviously you were one but dont class us all in the same bracket.
Because some were frivolous and some were stupid, some just had it all come too easy (and the Banks greed fed a lot of it all) the rest of us shouldnt have to suffer.
FF and FG are still lining their own pockets and living far beyond the means of the country so neither have any claim on cleaning up the mess!

Speak for yourself mate.. I wasn’t raking it in and spending frivolously during the boom. Never got in debt, always pay my bills on time, and still suffering for the excesses of others..
Less of this “we” business thank you :)