Mr. David Hearne:

With caretakers pay, the circular states €13 per hour but when the minimum wage increased the majority of schools increased it. They agreed that was what the caretakers deserved but that was all they got. They did not get anything else. We have a caretaker in Cork who was in the school 16 years and is on €13.50 an hour, working 37 hours a week. It is very hard in the cost-of-living crisis we are in at the moment to get by on that wage.