Teachers have branded the €9 million spend on mobile phone pouches for schools a ‘bizarre waste of money’.
The funding for the ‘Keeping Childhood Smartphone Free’ initiative was announced as part of Budget 2025.
It would provide secondary schools with funds to buy specialist pouches to hold student’s phones during school hours.
English teacher in Skibbereen Conor Murphy told The Hard Shoulder nobody wants these pouches.
"€9m for mobile phone sleeping bags seems slightly excessive for me," he said.
"They're not needed - nobody's called for them, nobody asked for them, no teacher has asked for them, no parent has asked for them.
"There's no need for them.
"For the majority - 99% of the schools - this is absolutely bizzare. Teachers are definitely livid and I know parents are livid at such a waste of money."
Mr Murphy said there's also no way to ensure students are putting their phone in the bag.
A young girl with a smartphoneNational Association for Principals & Deputy Principals Director Paul Crone told the show his members can't believe the level of money being spent.
"Unbelievable is the attitude," he said.
"I'm on my second charge of my phone today it's been ringing that many times with principals to confirm were they hearing this correctly.
"This is not a new issue we're dealing with - we've been dealing with this in schools for 15, 20 years or more.
"Every school has found a way to minimise the impact of the mobile phone".
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Mr Crone said there needs to be a "common sense approach" to the issue "where you're treating the students as adults".
He said school children also need to learn about "responsible use".
"If we're going to take responsibility for their phone while they're in post-primary school - and then the following year we send them off to college and they have to manage it all on their own - we're not being fair to them or the system," he said.
"€20 per student is the cost of the pouches - some schools do use them and they will report they find them very useful and helpful.
"A lot of schools use a lockaway box, some schools use the approach of, 'If I see it, I'm going to take it'.
"Each school has their own way of dealing with this and I could think of a dozen other ways that €9m would be better spent in our system".
Mr Crone said schools that already have a system in place are unlikely to spend the money on pouches.
"It could sit in the school account unspent if it's ring-fenced and restrictive in how you spend it," he added.
CyberSafe Kids CEO Alex Cooney told Newstalk €9m is a small amount of funding.
"It sounds like an enormous amount of money but I suppose it has to be seen in the context of a broader education budget of nearly €12bn," she said.
"I think it builds on something that they'd already committed to in previous statements around supporting schools to ensure that school environments were phone free during the school day.
"I've seen there's criticism around other things the money could have been spent on".
She added that digital literacy "should be a core part of the curriculum".
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