asked the Minister for Education what criteria must be met by parents wishing to obtain free school books for their children.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Free School Books.
59.
The purpose of the grant towards free books is to provide assistance for the children of parents in the lower income group. This group may be described generally as those people who are unable to pay out of their own resources for school books.
The school authorities have been given discretion in the selection of the pupils to whom assistance may be given.
For the guidance of managers and principal teachers it was stipulated that a necessitous pupil may, for the purposes of this scheme, be regarded as a child from a home where genuine hardship exists because of unemployment, prolonged illness of parent, large family with inadequate means, or other circumstances which would place the parents in the category of being unable to meet the cost of school books.