Mr. John MacGabhann:

That depends on the combination of subjects one is pursuing and the university one goes to. We are seeing people spending, typically, six years which are unpaid but, more importantly, it gets one into a situation in which one has absolutely no security and nothing but income poverty. What can the ETBs do in this respect? There are a number of things that can be done. ETBs will be given an allocation of whole time equivalent positions, as VECs are at the moment. Each whole time equivalent position should, to the greatest extent possible, transfer to an individual as a full job, not as scraps of a job. Some employers have become quite cynical. What they do when they get an allocation of, for example, an additional position is to scatter that allocation across two, three or more people, giving each of them the pretence of a job as opposed to a real job.

We have put it to the Department of Education and Skills that, as is the case at primary level, a panel system for fixed-term staff could be established for post-primary staff. We currently do not have one, but we have a claim which is being resisted by management - not hugely resisted but resisted none the less, because it wants to retain the flexibilities that result in our members, who are new members of the profession, remaining in income poverty. Through the ETBs, we could revise the contractual arrangements over time so that people who, for example, have a specialism such as physics, which not every school can provide, would be employed to provide the service to a number of schools. One would have people with a roving brief. That would address two issues: that of casualisation and that of the provision of broad curriculums in small schools. This will become extremely important in terms of the curricular changes the Minister is proposing.

Deputy O'Brien raised the issue of the amendment which appeared in the heads of the Bill but does not appear here. This is an amendment to section 13 of the Education Act, rather than any of the vocational Acts. In discussion with the Minister and elsewhere, we have described this amendment as positively bizarre. We understand that there is a need to protect the inspectorate in terms of the discharge of its duty if, for example, an inspector is charged with checking into financial irregularities within a school. That is fair enough, but where an inspector comes in to do his or her normal job, which is to observe teaching and learning within a school, if it happens to be the case that there is a genuine professional discussion or argument to be had between the school, the principal or teacher being inspected and the inspector, there should be nothing in legislation that would seek to prevent that argument or discussion taking place. There should certainly be nothing that would criminalise the teacher or teachers for engaging in that. The word "impede" can mean anything one wishes it to mean and is far too liberal. We suggest that if an amendment is required, it is not an amendment to section 13 of the Education Act but one to those parts of the Education Act that deal with finances. If there is to be an amendment and if it is felt that some protection is needed for the inspectorate in the discharge of its duty, a far less heavy hand should be applied to it. We would ask the committee to give serious consideration to and reject any proposal to reinstate a measure about which there is doubt even in the Department, because it would have already included it had there been no doubt.