Students and their parents face long queues for expensive books ahead of a new school year.
As three quarters of a million students prepare to start or return to school, long queues form outside bookshops throughout the country.
What's of most concern is, in fact, the cost of the books that the children are being asked to buy.
One secondary school girl talks about the expense of books for both herself and her sister. A physics book she bought secondhand cost seven pounds.
Brother Declan Duffy, secretary of the Secretariat of Secondary Schools, says that parents have expressed deep concern over the rising cost of school books. Books for a child starting secondary school now cost sixty pounds.
Brother Declan Duffy believes the book grant available to some pupils is completely inadequate to cover the cost.
Father Frank Lynne has found a way to avoid the queues and provide a more economical service. He has operated a school bookshop for the last 15 years at St Paul's College in Raheny. Father Lynne believes that the queues for books are unnecessary and that books can be provided directly through school bookshops. He also provides a secondhand book service, buying back textbooks that are still in use and selling them at cost.
Any school could run a bookshop.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 4 September 1979. The reporter is Kevin Healy.
