Irish Examiner view: Schools should not have to deal with the eTender system

The free schoolbooks scheme puts the responsibility on schools to organise their purchase — so they have to abide by onerous EU procurement and tendering rules

'If a school now needs to order books costing more than €50,000, it is obliged under EU law to put it out to tender, and select a single supplier who must supply hundreds of books in a once-off delivery by August.' Picture: iStock

As comfort blankets go, they don’t come much larger than the collective security of the EU with 27 nations bending towards the future with a common purpose.

Ireland has had good cause to count the benefits of being part of a larger whole, most notably during the covid pandemic when the collective purchasing power of the community ensured that our small country had a place at the table in the early days when the squeeze was on to obtain vaccines.