The government has announced the expansion of the Free Schoolbooks and Classroom Resources Scheme to all students accessing the Junior Cycle programme as part of spending promises in this year’s budget. Minister Norma Foley said that the initiative would involve an initial investment of €67 million that will benefit some 212,000 students.
The overall package amounted to €10.5 billion to the Department of Education and €4.1 billion to the Department of Further and Higher Education.
The Dept of Education said it would progress 300 school building projects at construction and a further 200 projects to proceed to construction during 2024 / early 2025 with a capital budget of €940m.
At further education level fees for Post Leaving Cert courses were abolished and there was a once-off reduction of 33 per cent in the contribution fee for apprentices in higher education.
At higher education level the government announced a €1,000 reduction in the student contribution fee for students eligible for the free fees initiative. With the new €500 student contribution grant the student contribution fee will be halved to €1,500 for eligible families with a household income of between €62,000 and €100,000
Budget reactions
The Irish University Association (IUA)welcomed a number of aspects of the budget for higher education including the measures to reduce the costs for students and the provisions to fund the cost of government-controlled pay awards. However, the IUA said the €60m increase in core funding for universities fell well short of the government’s own promise. In addition, the failure to unlock the growing €1.5 billion surplus in the National Training Fund was a missed opportunity.
In its initial reaction to the budget, the Teachers’ Union of Ireland has said the Government is in no way serious about tackling the teacher recruitment and retention crisis, an approach it says is ‘as baffling as it is worrying’.
The INTO welcomed the provision of €4m in 2024 for the restoration of posts of responsibility in schools from September 2024. General Secretary John Boyle said: “While we are disappointed that there has been no further class size reduction, we are pleased that government has addressed three of our four campaign priorities.”
ASTI President Geraldine O’Brien said: “Budget 2024 does not address the big issues in education requiring urgent investment such as class size, teacher shortages and school guidance/counselling services.”
The ASTI President welcomed the announcement regarding free school books for Junior Cycle students. However, the ASTI was disappointed that the one-off additional funding for schools this year has been reduced from €90m in 2023 to €61m in 2024. Schools struggled to survive on last year’s allocation, she said.