Monopoly racket on school uniforms must end \u2013 Crowe<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Sinn F\u00e9in Education spokesperson Se\u00e1n Crowe TD has called on Minister
\u00a0 Ruair\u00ed Quinn to \u2018get his act together\u2019 and do everything in his power to
\u00a0 bring down the costs of sending children to school including the growing
\u00a0 costs of school uniforms.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Deputy Crowe said the Minister has failed to deliver on his promised
\u00a0 reforms in relation to this matter.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Speaking today Deputy Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u201cThe cost of sending children to school is putting huge financial strain
\u00a0 on thousands of families who are already suffering the effects of the
\u00a0 recession and the budget cutbacks.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u201cIt is essential that everything that can be done to reduce these costs
\u00a0 is done.\u00a0 This must include bringing an end to the current situation
\u00a0 which sees a small number of retailers charging a fortune for school
\u00a0 jumpers which have the crests emblazoned on them.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u201cSome retailers are clearly abusing the monopoly they have on the market
\u00a0 for school uniforms.\u00a0 It has been described as an out and out racket by
\u00a0 many of the parents that I have spoken to.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u201cThis significant cost factor could be transformed overnight if each
\u00a0 school provided students with crests for a small cost to be sown onto
\u00a0 standard school jumpers.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u201cThe issue of school books also needs to be looked into.\u00a0 The use of
\u00a0 books that require students to write answers into them means that these
\u00a0 books cannot be passed onto other students at the end of the year.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u201cThis also needs to change and the Minister needs act on this and the
\u00a0 many other ways to reduce school costs.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u201cWhen I raised this issue with the Minister at a meeting of the
\u00a0 Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills in July he agreed to
\u00a0 consider some initiatives but so far we have seen nothing and parents
\u00a0 are still struggling.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u201cThis\u00a0 is\u00a0 simply\u00a0 not good enough from the Minister.\u00a0 Parents have been
\u00a0 expecting\u00a0 action to be taken yet nothing has happened.\u00a0 He needs to get
\u00a0 his\u00a0 act\u00a0 together and introduce new initiatives to bring down the costs
\u00a0 of sending children to school.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Monopoly racket on school uniforms must end \u2013 Crowe \u00a0 Sinn F\u00e9in Education spokesperson Se\u00e1n Crowe TD has called on Minister\u00a0 Ruair\u00ed Quinn to \u2018get his act together\u2019 and do everything in his power to\u00a0 bring down the costs of sending children to school including the growing\u00a0 costs of school uniforms. \u00a0 Deputy Crowe said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}