Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am the last in this round of speakers. Afterwards I am going to go back down to the list. Members might get 30 seconds each to pose additional questions. We will group them and we will give the last word to our guests from Fórsa.

I was a primary school teacher for 15 years. We placed huge value on our school secretary and caretaker. The school would not have functioned with them. As teachers, we operate in a silo. Once a teacher has that morning coffee at quarter to nine, he or she is in the classroom until the break and then back in again. The constant person in the school who the public interfaces with as they came through the door is the secretary as well as the caretaker who does everything from hanging pictures and notice boards to cleaning and setting out pitches. They both do invaluable work.

Like others, I come from a position of huge support but I wish to troubleshoot a few things that do not sit quite right in my head. It is not good to generalise but as Deputy Dempsey said earlier, rightly, most secretaries - at least in my experience locally - seem to be female while most caretakers seem to be male. That is just how it seems to pan out. The other point I wish to make about caretakers is that many of them seem to be older - again, in my experience locally - although it is great to see that Mr. Hearne is a young man. By migrating them over to becoming public servants might we have the unintended consequence of making many of them redundant? I can think of several local caretakers over the age of 70 years. They would have to retire if they were public servants. Many of these men have already retired from a previous forms of work. They are pensioned. This is a top-up income. They do a superb job, but they could lose their pension by migrating over to this.

The third point I wish to make is that because of the ancillary grant schools used for taking on caretakers, I know of many local schools who contracted in the local person who does lawns, hedges, etc. He is able to do his own work and work in the school for eight or ten hours a day. There are bigger schools where this is every day of the week and every hour of the day, but I am talking about rural schools.

This is campaign has huge support but are there unintended consequences that mean some of Fórsa’s members, by virtue this campaign, could be knocked out of the employment realm?