Hanafin rules out spending €167m on secondary laptops

Providing laptops for the State's 334,000 second-level students would cost €167 million, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin told the Dáil.

Ruling out their provision, she said that it would be an extremely expensive development and one that, for a number of reasons, would not be a wise investment.

"There would, of course, be other very substantial costs for items such as insurance, maintenance and networking.

"The issue of replacement costs would also arise, as would the risk of viruses being brought into the school from home systems."

Fine Gael spokesman Brian Hayes said most schools had to depend on Tesco vouchers to obtain additional PCs. In Northern Ireland an interactive whiteboard was standard, which was not the case in the Republic.

He argued that his proposal to provide laptops to second-level students was sensible from cost and environmental perspectives, and also in terms of encouraging greater interconnectivity within the secondary school system.

Ms Hanafin said she genuinely did not believe that the provision of a laptop for every student was the best use of resources or the way to promote an e-learning culture in a school.

"I am not convinced of the value of the provision of an interactive whiteboard for every class.

"I have seen them in action in some places.

"A good teacher is a good teacher with a blackboard or a whiteboard, and a bad teacher is a bad teacher with a whiteboard or a blackboard."