Fr. Paul Connell:

I welcome some of the initiatives mentioned about the continuing courses, etc. It is important though that we incentivise them for teachers, and particularly that we fund them. Teachers have gone through an expensive process in graduating and getting through college, and if they are incentivised to go and do further courses, that will work.

We also have to come back to the skills mismatch. I note some our colleagues here have stated there is no evidence of that but at school level, we are seeing the mismatch all the time. If one advertises for particular positions, one will get a lot of applications for certain positions and very few for the STEM, the modern languages and that kind of subject.

We should try to find some creative way of dealing with the substitute teacher. There is always a case that if one has too many teachers for permanent positions, there are substitute positions that will be coming up, for instance, for maternity and other leave. These leave types need to be looked at because it is not feasible for a teacher to hang around expecting to get work - six weeks here and seven weeks there. If there was some way of getting a substitute contract for the year where the teacher would have certainty about what he or she could expect, that would go a way towards solving some of the problems we have.

Finally, and I do not want to be in any way misunderstood about this, we also need to take account of the new initiatives, such as parental leave, paternity leave and unpaid leave. These pose a particular difficulty in secondary schools because it can be difficult to get a teacher in a particular language area or whatever, for example, for a three-week or a four-week break. In other areas of employment, it is much easier for people to cover for each other. It is not that easy at second level. We need to give some thought to that. I am not in any way saying such leave should not be availed of - of course, it should - but we need to make some provision for it within the system.