Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Ciarán Cannon.

I have been contacted by numerous teachers who have been trying to get accreditation for a long period of time from the Teaching Council. In one instance, a teacher with 17 years experience has been waiting for more than two years, while another teacher with specific qualifications in applied mathematics has been waiting for more than a year. It has gone beyond the point of frustration for these teachers. They want to get the proper accreditation and get on with their jobs. I raise this issue because I do not understand why should it take this long to do it. Why should a teacher be told, over the telephone, by a person in the Teaching Council that he or she will be dealt with within the following 16 to 18 weeks?

We politicians live in the real world. If someone rings us on a Monday morning, he or she expects us to get back to him or her by that afternoon and to have the issue sorted by the Tuesday morning. That is the world in which we and many people in the private sector live. Many within the public service live in that world also. I am not disparaging or making generalisations about the public sector. However, I would like to know why an official can recite over the telephone that it will take 16 to 18 weeks to sort out a problem that could be dealt with much more quickly. It sends a message about the lack of efficiency, due process and initiative on the part of officials in such positions.

We need to look at these instances in the context of the overall reform to which the Minister for Education and Skills and the Minister of State are aspiring. There will be considerable change and reform in the education system. We should emulate countries such as Finland that are spending minimal amounts of Exchequer funding on administration but pumping money into the classroom and the coalface of teaching. They are also empowering schools and devolving power to the local level. We have inherited a centralised education system. While checks and balances are needed in any system, our model which concentrates control at the centre needs to be examined closely when we go through the reform process.

When the public sees what is happening to the pupil-teacher ratio in primary schools and teachers' jobs being threatened, the issue of fairness comes up. Members of the public are not considering fairness in relation to what is happening in their own backyard but in other places where savings could be made. I am not saying we should abolish the Teaching Council. I am saying we must send a strong signal that efficiencies are being made in the Teaching Council. Making a telephone message to say it will take 16 to 18 weeks to sort out a very simple problem does not augur well for the efficiencies towards which we aspire to making.

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