Books Available at Barnardo's for hard pressed parents

With the children's charity Barnardo's highlighting the pressure being put on families by back to school spending, local parents can help to cut back on costs by visiting the secondhand school book shop at the Dundalk People's Centre (formerly the resource centre).

"Our aim is to take the pressure off parents in regards to schoolbooks as they can buy good quality second hand books at practically half the price of new one's" explains supervisor Patricia Carolan.

The shop operates every summer from June until late September. Patricia and her team of friendly and helpful staff take in used text books for both primary & secondary, log them and then sell them.

Everyone is a winner as those selling the books get to recoup some of what they paid for them, while those buying the books can make a substantial savings compared to buying new books.

The books offered for sale are all in good condition.

"We have a rule that we only take in books that we would buy ourselves" explains Patricia.

While the shop has proven very successful with parents down the years, Patricia says that it has not been so busy this summer.

"We've actually stopped taking in some primary school books as a lot of primary schools are now running rental services for readers so there is not as much demand for these books as tere used to be"

The constant changing in course books also means that parents are forced into buying new revised editions of textbooks, depriving them of the opportunity to save money.

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