Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am looking forward to visiting Carlow College with Deputy Murnane O'Connor shortly. I thank both Deputies for raising this important issue. My understanding is that very good progress was made on agreeing the grades. I hope I did not suggest it, but this is not to suggest that the work an adult education tutor does is similar to another job. It is aligning the terms and conditions with other people working in the further education and training sector, which I think is appropriate. It is getting them into a regularised space, with a proper contract and the normal things that people would expect in any contract.

The sticking point was around the proposal in regard to an increment. The proposal was for an increment to be awarded following completion of 1,043 contact hours, rather than on the completion of 52 weeks worked. The unions contended that section 9 of the Protection of Employees (Part-Time Work) Act 2001 requires that part-time and full-time adult educators receive increments after the same periods of employment regardless of the number of hours worked during that period of employment. I sought legal advice in this regard and on foot of that, we have worked very closely with ETBI and with the representative bodies of the adult education tutors. As a result, an updated proposal is now issuing to the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform on the basis of that increment being awarded on the completion of 52 weeks.

That is where we are literally right now. It follows on from a meeting where there was an agreement in principle between TUI, SIPTU and the ETB sector on the implementation process on 12 January, followed by a meeting of my Department, the ETB sector and the unions on 16 January, which fell on a Tuesday. I will now submit the proposal to the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and, following that, we will be straight back to the unions. I want to see this issue resolved and I know the adult education tutors really want to see it resolved. A huge of amount of work has been done in good faith by everyone. There were a couple of sticking points around implementation. The Building Momentum piece around the increases due to those tutors on SOLAS-funded programmes who are paid on self-financing rates will also be addressed as part of this process.

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