Irish school libraries are underfunded, under-resourced and are falling short of international standards. The Department of Education only funds 4% of school libraries. This morning I was in my local Mercy Secondary School. It is a DEIS school where parents fundraise for the library but there is no librarian to bring this to life. Funding school libraries is the best way to ensure access to reading and books and make sure every young person has the best start in life. Currently, only 30 DEIS schools are part of the junior certificate school programme demonstration library project. That is 30 out of 235 DEIS schools. When will the other 200-odd DEIS schools get a funded library and a funded librarian so that we can get up to international standards again?

The Minister’s priority for DEIS was to engineer the biggest expansion of DEIS since it was originally established in the early 2000s and the Minister has achieved that over the last two years, in terms of the number of schools covered by DEIS and all the teaching supports which is quite significant in terms of the reduction in the pupil-teacher ratio in DEIS schools and the other supports that follow with DEIS designation.

I agree with the importance of libraries. Some of the technology grants and supports can be used for online facilities, resources and supports. The priority this year was to bring in free books for primary school children. That has been successfully delivered from its announcement last year to enactment this September. It is something that many parents are very pleased with. We are committed to doing what we can to strengthen the resources around libraries in schools.

We are over time. I call Deputy Ellis.