Mr. Diarmaid de Paor:

I am echoing what both Ms Dolan and Mr. Kelly have been saying. Permanent jobs is one of the issues. It is interesting that the notion of an objective ground for not giving somebody a CID after four years seems to be very well-known by the employers in education. There does not seem to be a notion that there has to be an objective ground for giving a fixed-term contract in the first place. While the Department will continually say to us that it has no reason, and there is no bar from the Department to giving somebody a permanent job once there is vacancy, I think it needs to be far sterner. It should be giving a permanent job if there is not a reason for it to be a fixed-term contract. I had a fixed term contract myself in 1988. It was a dubious fixed-term contract, and probably one of the first in the country. I am familiar with the dubious fixed-term contract. If a teacher of Irish or mathematics is employed in a school next September, there is no way the school can say a teacher of mathematics will not be needed in ten, 12 or 15 years time, so why is that person not given a permanent job subject to normal probation? I think that should be enforced. Maybe we should do more on our side, but the Department should tell schools to give people jobs if they have jobs to give. If there are issues to do with numbers dropping, that can be dealt with by way of redeployment or such like, as is normal.

In the meantime - let us not be totally optimistic and think we are going to get everything we want when we go into these talks - there could be an extensive of the Ward report. There are many areas in which it could be extended. There are teachers not covered at the moment, like teachers who are covering for teachers on job-sharing, for example. There are also what one might call itinerant teachers, teachers who have had a series of jobs in different schools and have been unlucky. They have covered for a maternity leave in one place, then a career break in another place, and teachers have come back. We have teachers who have had 11 years of teaching in different schools and because of that, they are no further on the road to permanency. That can either be dealt with by way of a panel, which is supposed to be dealt with under the Haddington Road agreement, or by extending the Ward report in such a way as to encompass these people and say that if they have done a certain number of years, they will automatically be put on the redeployment panel. I think that would be the simplest and easiest way to deal with it and we are looking for something like that.

The issues that are addressed in the Bill here specifically and the ones we would like to see further addressed to do with shorter hours are issues we would like to see have legislative underpinning, but we could also seek some progress as part of collective agreements. As members of the committee know, collective agreements do not have the same legal standing as if legislation supported them.

That is the case in brief. My contribution was shorter because I represent only one grade and not 40.