Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will begin by apologising for being late. I thank all of the speakers for their presentations. I would be completely opposed to any sort of live streaming of classes. As the mother of two boys, I would absolutely refuse to send my children to school if that was the level we reached. That is completely unacceptable. Students need to have a teacher to whom they can speak if they have a difficulty or problem. They need to be able to speak to teachers after class and so on. We all know that there is a recruitment and retention crisis in the education sector but live streaming classes is not the solution. That is not the answer to the problem. We need to figure out why people are not staying in teaching and why graduates are not choosing the profession and, as Ms Irwin has said, it has to do with the wages. There is nothing there to motivate people.

It really angers me to hear live streaming being proposed as a solution. We are failing students and their parents again here. Parents will have to pick up the slack in such scenarios and will end up paying for grinds when the virtual class falls apart. If we start settling for second best, which is what live streaming represents, then we may forget about ever getting any sort of equality for the newer teachers coming through the system. I am 100% against that and hope that we never see that developing. It is fine at third level or for mature students who know exactly what they want to study and who are totally motivated. However, it is not fine for students who are already having difficulties, such as those with learning difficulties, anxiety issues or issues with just getting in to school. We should not settle for that at all.

What we need to see is equal treatment for our teachers. They must all be paid at the same rate. It should not be the case that those who qualified in 2000 earn a better wage than those who are qualifying now. We need to make sure that we incentivise our teachers to stay here and to continue to teach. We need to ensure that they are not dragged into other professions or dragged abroad because of wages. At the moment that is happening because teachers' wages are inadequate. A lot of newly-qualified teachers simply cannot afford to stay here or to stay in the teaching profession. They would love to teach here but they will not be able to get a mortgage or to meet the general costs of living here. These are the issues that we need to focus on rather than coming up with get-out clauses for the Government in the form of virtual classrooms or the live streaming of some subjects. I do not think that would be acceptable under any circumstances. It is also not acceptable that we have teachers teaching subjects in which they are not qualified. That is not fair to the teachers or to the students. That said, live streaming is not the answer under any circumstances. I feel very strongly about this.

I am like a broken record at this stage because at almost every meeting of this committee I say the same thing. The key issue in all of this is the impact on students. It is so unfair that the person who did the leaving certificate ten or 15 years ago has a better chance than someone doing it now. That is completely wrong. We must take a stand on this. This committee must be a lot more vocal about the fact that we cannot allow this situation to continue. Teachers are leaving the country in droves and leaving the profession in droves. It is clear that there is a crisis. I really want to support the unions on this, particularly the TUI. We need to see pay restoration; that is key in all of this. It is not the only thing, but it is one of the key things.