Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Public Accounts Committee
Department of Education and Skills - Review of Allowances
11:30 am
John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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We turn now to the Comptroller and Auditor General's report and appropriation accounts for 2011: Vote 26 - Education and Skills, review of allowances. I remind members, witnesses and those in the Visitors' Gallery to turn off their mobile phones because the interference causes difficulty with the transmission of the meeting. That interference was particularly noticeable yesterday. Yesterday, we had an ongoing issue with the transmission of the meeting due to mobile phones. We were getting messages from the media telling us that they could not reproduce for transmission what was going on here. Those who are looking at these hearings find it difficult to use the material afterwards because of the interference caused by mobile phones.
I advise witnesses that they are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they are to give to this committee. If they are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence in respect of a particular matter and they continue to do so, they are entitled thereafter only to a qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. They are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against a Member of either House, a person outside the House or an official by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.
Members are reminded of the provisions within Standing Order 158 that the committee shall also refrain from inquiring into the merits of a policy or policies of the Government or a Minister of the Government or the merits or the objectives of such policies.
I welcome Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú, Secretary General at the Department of Education and Skills, and invite him to introduce his officials.
11:40 am
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
I am joined by Mr. Pat Burke, assistant secretary; Mr. Philip Crosby, principal officer, Mr. Micheál Lenihan, assistant principal; Ms Tara Carton, assistant principal; Mr. Pat Pykett, assistant principal; and Mr. Ray Corbet, higher executive officer, all from the external staff relations section.
John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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I invite Mr. Thomas Clarke, principal officer at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, to introduce the witness accompanying him.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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I apologise but the Chairman mentioned earlier that the unions were invited to these meetings but refused to attend. Will the Chairman clarify this?
John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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We invited them to attend. It is not that they refused; they would prefer to be represented through their congress at the next meeting.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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What reasons did they give?
John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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It was different with regard to Department of Defence in the way they are represented. The unions would prefer to be represented by their congress, which will happen in the course of the hearings. They did not want to be represented individually. We must respect this because what they say may impact on some of the negotiations that take place outside of this room. They can either come themselves, which they chose not to, or be represented in the further discussions we will have with congress, which is a fair point. I would not like it to be understood that they refused to come; this is not the case. It is just the way they are represented in other Departments is different from how they are represented in the Department of Defence.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Chairman.
John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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I invite Mr Ó Foghlú to make his opening statement.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
I thank the committee for its invitation to be here today. Together with my colleagues I am happy to assist it in its examination of public sector allowances in so far as they relate to the education sector. As requested by the committee, the Department has supplied detailed information on allowances in the education sector. It might be helpful if I present an overview of this material and put a context around allowances as paid in the sector.
In its analysis, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform took a cross-sectoral approach to allowances payable in Departments and state agencies. Leaving these aside, in broad terms the sector can be divided into the school sector, the institute of technology sector, the university sector, and the VEC sector. The overall pay bill inclusive of allowances for these four areas is €5.116 billion. Of this overall figure allowances, however defined, account in aggregate for approximately €639 million or 12.5% of the overall pay allocation.
Allowances paid to teachers account for approximately €616 million or 96% of the overall amount paid as allowances in the education sector. This equates to 16% of the overall teacher pay bill of €3.83 billion. These allowances are paid in various combinations to virtually all of the approximately 58,000 teachers in the system. In the range of allowances paid to teachers, four are dominant in terms both of scale and amount. It might be of assistance, therefore, if I give some insight into these. The four allowances in question are those payable for qualifications, substitution and supervision, posts of responsibility, and the 35 year service allowance.
Teachers have been in receipt of qualifications allowances since the Ryan report on teacher pay in the late 1960s. In large measure, this report used the qualification allowance as a mechanism for making recommendations on teacher pay, which would avoid public service-wide repercussions. Until the introduction of a cap on the overall amount payable in December 2011, the amount of this allowance was linked to the nature of the qualification held by the teacher and ranged from €5,539 for a teacher with an honours degree and higher diploma in education to €6,638 for a teacher with a higher diploma in education and a doctorate. Following the introduction of the cap, the overall qualification allowance payment for new beneficiaries was restricted to €4,426. More recently and following the review of allowances, qualification allowances for new entrant teachers were abolished. As part of this measure a new pay scale is being put in place for these new entrants, with a starting point equivalent to the fourth point of the existing teacher pay scale.
The origin of the allowance for substitution and supervision was the protracted industrial dispute over the period from 2000 to 2002. The ultimate negotiated settlement to this dispute involved putting in place a new regime for the delivery of substitution and supervision with an associated allowance, which in current terms is €1,592 per annum.
Allowances paid for posts of responsibility are broadly analogous to promotion posts in other areas of the public service. Such allowances relate to four types of post, namely, principal, deputy principal, assistant principal and special duties post. It is very debatable whether these are allowances in the commonly understood meaning of the term. That said, we will review this post structure and look at issues such as the feasibility of a grade-based structure as opposed to the current arrangement. There is no doubt this raises issues, such as the fact that a principal's allowance reflects school size and that principals assume that role at various stages in their career as a teacher.
The fourth largest allowance payable to teachers is the 35 year allowance. This becomes payable to teachers ten years after reaching the maximum point of the pay scale and is comparable to a long-service increment, paid in many areas of the public service.
In teaching there are a range of other allowances and the details have been provided to the committee. Outside the teaching area there is a very wide spectrum of allowances principally in the university and institute of technology areas. These are payable across a wide spectrum, and at €22 million they account for 1.7% of the €1.29 billion total pay bill for those sectors.
Committee members have in their possession the various business cases established by the Department as part of the review of allowances conducted by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. In addition, the material provided by the Department provides further detail on the categories of allowances grouped by business case as requested by the committee. These categories are, in turn, disaggregated in a more detailed spread sheet provided for the assistance of the committee.
Following the review of allowances, the Government has approved a number of measures relating to public service allowances for new beneficiaries. In terms of the teaching profession, the impact of the Government decision will apply to new entrant teachers only. The Department will shortly issue circulars giving effect to the Government decision. Allowances already paid to currently employed teachers are not directly affected by the Government decision. However, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has recently directed that line Departments should open discussions with individual union groups on the removal of certain allowances from current beneficiaries. The process, which is one of negotiation, has commenced. This process will involve the examination of more than 80 allowances currently paid in the education sector. There are in excess of 12,000 beneficiaries of these allowances in the education sector, with an approximate annual cost of €16 million.
As I mentioned, we will be happy to assist the committee in answering to the best of our ability any questions members may wish to put to us or in making available any supplementary information not currently provided.
John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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May we publish Mr. Ó Foghlú's statement?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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I thank all of the witnesses for coming before the committee and for the very detailed information they supplied, which has been very helpful. I will begin my questions to Mr. Ó Foghlú on something he said at the end of his statement. I am interested in what is meant by current beneficiaries of allowances. Recently the Minister made an announcement that 88 allowances for current beneficiaries in the public sector were to be reviewed. Mr. Ó Foghlú spoke about 80 allowances in the education sector alone. Are we discussing the same process?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Of the 88 allowances to be reviewed, 80 are in the education sector.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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This is with regard to the February deadline, whereby we hope to have a resolution by February next year.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Which are the priority areas with regard to allowances for current beneficiaries?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Will we discuss allowances today which have been prioritised by the Department for review?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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We will get into the details on them.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
Yes.
There is no difficulty in talking through the details of any allowance but we want to be careful about the negotiating strategy with the unions that we will enter into. We have just commenced that and informed some of the unions this week to that effect. In starting that process we are having discussions with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform about the prioritisation of certain allowances. Some of these are not just related to the education sector, as Deputies are aware, and there are common elements across a number of other Departments. We must have a joined-up approach with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and other Departments in advancing our negotiating approaches with unions.
11:50 am
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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In talking about those allowances, are we including current beneficiaries?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Would it be fair to say that some of the allowances initially identified as not being available to new entrants are now on the negotiating table in their application to current beneficiaries?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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The hope is to save €16 million from the allowances.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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That process has begun. The February date has been mentioned and we hope that some part of the process will have concluded with regard to the 88 allowances by then. Are we hoping to see something with the priority areas at least by February next year?
Mr. Pat Burke:
To go back over the 88 allowances, there is a logic in the process. With allowances for which a prospective case for retention in the hands of new beneficiaries was not advanced, logically there is a question mark with regard to those allowances in the hands of current beneficiaries. That is the logic of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform position. There is a reality which that scale of allowances will have to have with regard to timescales and negotiations. We envisage starting the process in the very near future with a focused number of such allowances. We have not made a final call on those yet. I do not underestimate the difficulty of this but the objective is to commence the element in the near future and achieve some finality by the February deadline.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Must the Department consider new business cases? The business cases for many of the allowances initially submitted began with an indication that the allowance is considered core pay and under the Croke Park agreement it would not be discussed for current beneficiaries but rather for new entrants. Decisions were made in that respect. If it is not a new process, will the Department return with new terms under which to make the case?
Mr. Pat Burke:
There were 88 allowances and we accept there is not a case for them to be renewed. There is a range of examples, including the Gaeltacht and island allowances. There may have been circumstances when they first came into being and in our judgment they no longer obtain. With a range of other allowances they were deemed effectively to be part of core pay. To define core pay, we took a general view that if an allowance is generic - paid to everybody within a grade - it is much more likely to be categorised as part of core pay. If an allowance is paid to a subset of people for particular duties and so on, it would not be as clearly part of core pay. The business cases were divided into those which should legitimately be retained and those which should not be retained in future. The exercise now under way relates to the second category, for which there was not a case prospectively, and we are now commencing a process of seeking to negotiate their removal from current beneficiaries.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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The Gaeltacht and island allowances were mentioned and they have been singled out. The Minister mentioned they were being examined. Is the Irish language allowance being considered?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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It is not being paid to new entrants but we are looking to see if existing beneficiaries will be able to continue with it. How much is that allowance worth?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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We have had some correspondence and appendices to the correspondence so I have a couple of general questions before dealing with specific allowances. In Appendix A there are examples of teachers and allowances they might receive. There is a basic salary and the total value of allowances is added for the gross salary. Tax is paid on the gross total. There has been some misinformation about that in the media. The gross salary is also used in calculating the pension.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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That is the value of the allowances. Those are being identified because they are paid to a subset and it is not a generic payment across a grade.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Appendix B details the number of allowances held by teachers. There are 460 primary teachers not getting an allowance. The number of teachers in receipt of one allowance at primary level is 17,048 and 15,446 at second level, with a total of 32,494. At the bottom of that table it states that in addition to the above, almost 95% of teachers receive the supervision and substitution payment. That allowance does not seem to be calculated in the table.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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When there is an indication that 17,048 primary teachers are in receipt of one allowance, the effect is that there are two allowances for 95% of them.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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The figure would largely remain the same. That would apply across the board.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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With regard to the supervision and substitution payment, it is worth €116 million.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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It is €118 million on an annual basis. That is not being continued for new entrants.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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It is being continued.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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It goes to teachers in primary and secondary schools.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Is there a breakdown of what the allowance is for? I saw a figure indicating that €50 million is spent annually for primary schools yard supervision. Is that included in this? Does that come under the substitution and supervision allowance?
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
Perhaps it might be useful to give some background on that allowance. It arose from the lengthy industrial relations dispute from 2000 to 2002. Prior to that, supervision and substitution had been undertaken on a kind of grace and favour basis by teachers. At second level in particular, teachers withdrew that grace and favour basis and we had to move to the position of giving schools money to employ supervisors for pupils outside classes. Arising from that we entered into detailed discussions with the unions and agreed a scheme whereby they would take responsibility for 37 hours of supervision and substitution in return for a payment. Where teachers did not opt into the scheme, we give the schools a grant to employ supervisors. That is the basis and it applies in a different way in primary and post-primary schools because of the nature of the primary school day, where there is full class contact time, as opposed to secondary level, where there is typically 22 hours of class contact time. The supervision could be yard supervision before or after school but it could also apply to classes where a teacher is unavailable.
It was subject to a Comptroller and Auditor General review with regard to the 2007 and 2008 school year.
The report was published in 2009. It was considered by this committee and in some detail at the time. As part of the agreement with teachers under the Croke Park agreement, we increased the number of hours at second level, whereby teachers would make themselves available or opt to be available for an increased number of hours. Teachers agree with their principal regarding their availability for a number of class periods per week. We increased the potential availability in order that principals would have a better option when it came to getting teachers to supervise under the substitution and supervision scheme.
12:00 pm
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Was the measure introduced in 2002?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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When it was introduced, teachers would voluntarily sign up to be available for an extra 37 hours in a year to get the allowance. For that they would make themselves available for duties such as yard supervision at a primary school during their lunchbreak on a given day. In a secondary school where a teacher's absence resulted in a free class, another teacher would come in to watch over the class.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Are both times supervised in secondary schools?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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I am curious to know what changed around that time. For many years it was seen as the job of a teacher that, where a colleague was sick, for example, another teacher would supervise the class, or a teacher provided yard supervision for, say, one lunchbreak every three weeks depending on the number of teachers. What was the change in circumstances that led teachers to think that supervision was no longer part of their job?
Mr. Pat Burke:
Teacher unions, probably up until 2000 to 2002, would always have maintained that substitution and supervision work was not part of their core contract. One might argue the rights and wrongs of this view, as indeed I probably would. It was given on what they would have described it as a grace and favour basis. That came to a crunch in a particularly bitter industrial dispute back in the early 2000s, which many will remember. Industrial action meant teachers withdrew from the duty. The State then was obliged to bring in outside people to undertake the supervision work. It was a real challenge to government pay policy. Ultimately, the negotiated settlement was one where an allowance was put in place for substitution and supervision work. It was technically optional for a teacher to decide whether he or she would undertake the work and receive the allowance but the majority of teachers bought into the scheme. It had the benefit, from the point of view of the State and the system, of providing a better substitution and supervision service that was no longer reliant on a principal asking a teacher to do something on an almost voluntary basis. There was now greater certainty but undoubtedly there was a cost attached.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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We are talking about 41,500 teachers signing up for 37 hours of additional work, or roughly one hour a week per teacher. Has that work been called in? The Comptroller and Auditor General queried whether those hours are being used.
Mr. Pat Burke:
Yes. Following the Comptroller and Auditor General's report and as part of the Croke Park agreement in its initial negotiation, we extended, from two to three, the allowable number of periods per week during which teachers could be called upon. The effect means it is significantly more likely that the 37 hours will be called on in full. School budgets for alternative substitution have also been restricted. We are more optimistic about it now.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Does that mean that we have a big problem with teachers not turning up for work or not being available for work? These teachers are supervising and substituting for other teachers who are not present. If the full 37 hours per year are being used, why do we have 41,500 teachers? There seem to be many hours of absenteeism.
Mr. Pat Burke:
There are two dimensions to the allowance. We can talk separately about teachers' sick leave. I am not sure that we have the figures in front of us at the moment. To be fair and from recollection, sick leave is not out of kilter in any significant way with absentee or sick leave rates elsewhere in the sector.
There are two dimensions to the allowance: the provision of substitution and supervision. The latter arises for a multiplicity of reasons such as preschool and lunch breaks. Even if one has a teacher who is delayed in the morning, whatever the circumstances, and arrives at 10 a.m. rather than 9 a.m., there will be a call for substitution and someone must take the class.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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We give money to schools to pay for people to come in to cover for teachers not being in the school.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
In certain circumstances. I think the first day of uncertified sick leave is not covered. We have also taken action where there were high levels of permissions for uncertified leave days. They were reduced to a maximum of seven per year. A number of different changes have made an impact on teacher absences. The substitution arrangements are permitted only for particular absences such as certified leave and maternity leave.
There is another aspect which makes the teaching profession different from other professions. If a civil servant is absent from his or her job, he or she does not have to supervise and manage a class. There is a need for someone to be physically present when a teacher is not available. The same does not apply to other areas of the public sector. I am not saying that the work of other areas of the public sector is not important. It is just that it is possible for a Civil Service unit, for example, to split its work up for a day, but with teaching, someone needs to be present for a class or else that class must be split up. To be fair, in schools where we do not provide substitution, classes are sometimes split up. It is one of the strategies such schools use. The Department does not want them to do that or at least only in very limited circumstances.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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It is not really comparable because a teacher's job is supervision. It is not unusual for a teacher to sit in front of a class for a 45 minute period.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
If the teacher is not there, for whatever reason, then there is a need for someone else to be present. In the Civil Service, one does not have to replace a person on a sick leave day.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Someone still has to do his or her work or cover their workstation.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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If they man a telephone or are working on a project, someone else must step in, and in most workplaces people do step in. If I told someone in the private sector that he or she might have to step into the shoes of someone else for an hour every week, their first thought would be to accept that cover was part of the job. Their second thought would be to question where that person is. I would have an issue with that. If I was told that, once every two weeks, I might have to work through lunch because the company was doing something in particular, I would accept that as part of my job.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
In a primary school a sixth class teacher cannot step in to manage fourth class because they have their own class to manage. All they can do is take the fourth class pupils into their room if it is big enough, or else the teachers in other classrooms agree to the fourth class students being split up between them. We do not disagree with the overall point made by the Deputy.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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How are extra hours given when, for example, the teachers of that sixth class do not supervise?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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In most cases do we pay people to come in from outside to supervise those classes in primary schools?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Do primary school teachers receive the allowance for signing up for the extra 37 hours?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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But they are doing that for yard duty.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Can they supervise classes in primary schools?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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In primary school it is supervision.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Then we are talking about yard duty.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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During lunch break?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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It is just to cover the breaks and to go into the yard to supervise children and to ensure everything is okay.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Obviously someone has to do that.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Up to 2000 that task was seen as part of the job and a teacher would be called upon to do it once a week or every two weeks. When I was in school I can remember a teacher being out in the yard holding her cup of coffee and eating her sandwich. The teachers did yard duty on a rotational basis and that was how it worked.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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They would not have seen it as part of their core responsibilities as a teacher in a school.
12:10 pm
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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In terms of teachers' salaries and their increase over time, and it is important we pay teachers enough because we want good people in the profession, was it not seen as coming under the salary? Is it not accepted under the salary at that point? The Department could have said that it was expanding the contract and not taking the grace and favour approach, that these were part of core responsibilities and part of core pay.
Mr. Pat Burke:
It is a matter of hindsight. Looking back to 2000, one of the teacher unions - ASTI, I think - was seeking a 30% increase in pay. It is inconceivable in today's terms. There was a significant dispute and a real concern, on the part of the Government, that if anything was conceded over and above the general pay settlement, it would effectively unravel the Government pay policy at the time. Whatever was conceded at the time, it would not have been tactically prudent to have conceded a salary increase. That was the genesis of the ultimate settlement, travelling by way of an allowance.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Looking back at these things, we are trying to find greater flexibility in the workplace and greater cost savings. Some 80% of the education budget is locked into pay and we cannot consider it in the cuts we are trying to make. Is this not a concession the Department could make, potentially saving €100 million? Before 2002, until ten years ago, it was part of the responsibilities of teachers and they were not paid in addition. The Department could say that it is going to look at it again because it is covered as part of salary and other allowances in the system. Most teachers receive some form of an allowance according to the matrix provided in Appendix B. The Department could explain that this is the situation we are in and that we must go back to the way things were ten years ago. The Department seems to have decided not to pursue that.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
On the overall point, a high percentage of the education budget is pay but that does not mean the pay budget cannot be reduced. We can change teacher allocations and not replace teachers who retire. Just because pay makes up a certain percentage of the budget does not mean there cannot be reductions in the pay budget without touching pay rates. It is an important point. The measures introduced in recent years, as well as the Government measures relating to pension-related deductions and pay, teacher and other education personnel allocation decisions resulted in reduced numbers working in the education sector.
On Deputy Eoghan Murphy's second point, we have a position where a number of teachers do not want this to be part of their core functions. Some 5% have decided not to do it and we have an issue in that respect when considering a future approach. If we bring this back within the pay structure, we would require them to undertake duties they are not happy to do. Typically, we would have to bring the amount into the salary. We have done so for new entrants as we have slightly changed the conditions attaching to the supervision and substitution. This applies to more than 95% of new entrants who, given that they are starting their careers, are opting for supervision and substitution. We consider the starting salary for new entrants to be the first point of the new scale plus supervision and substitution. In the case of existing teachers, we have had discussions in the context of the Croke Park agreement about supervision and substitution and the agreement is that teachers will agree to make themselves more available under the Croke Park discussions on hours.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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The supervision and substitution allowance has been moved into core pay for new entrants.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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If over 95% of people are prepared to do it, we can fairly say they understand it is part of the job. In negotiating new contracts, I would not be so worried about the 5% or less given that the majority of the workforce accepts this is something that must be done. They are happy to do it.
In the provision for the teachers coming in, the allowance and the extra hours they have decided to take on, the Comptroller and Auditor General was concerned that the figure of 37 hours was not being met. The assumption is that there was not a need for the 37 hours but now the Departments suggests there is a need for 49 hours.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
During the processing of this Comptroller and Auditor General review, we significantly reduced the categories under which substitution was made, especially as it applied to official school business at second level. We reduced it significantly. Initially, the Government removed the category of official school business and then allocated a few million because schools found it very difficult to cope. Many school management bodies indicated there would be difficulties in keeping schools open in January 2009 if a small amount of substitution was not available. We reduced the categories in order to ensure the 37 hours is maximised at second level.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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What does Mr. Ó Foghlú mean when he says the Department reduced the categories?
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
We reduced the categories for which substitution is payable separately. We reduced uncertified sick leave, whether someone could pay for a substitute to come to the school. We made it much tighter when schools are bringing in substitutes that are separately paid in order to encourage schools to use their allocation of 37 hours. The schools report to us that teachers have undertaken 37 hours. If funding is available for the grant at the end of the year, we offset that against the following year. We have a number of mechanisms to ensure this is the case.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Coming back to supervision at primary level, has anything changed if there was concern that teachers were not meeting the full 37 hours in the year? The Department has increased the number of hours for which teachers are available but perhaps they are not being called on to fill the hours.
Mr. Pat Burke:
I will recap on the post-primary situation. The allocation of 37 hours is a post-primary phenomenon only and it was needed at post-primary level because we do not have the class teacher occupying the class for the full day. There is no doubt the regime of substitution and supervision as it existed at primary school level in 2002 was a great deal more satisfactory than what obtained at second level. We have a concept of the common basic scale for teachers' pay at both levels. Primary and second level teachers have been remunerated equally for many decades. In 2000, there was a real issue of whether we would seek to apply an allowance only to the second level sector, thereby breaking the common basic scale and, probably in perception terms, be seen to reward unions that had embarked on industrial action while we did nothing at primary level. That was a tactical issue at the time. The tactical call of the Government was to maintain the common salary scale and structure for both and, in the process, get greater certainty on primary level, albeit where needs were not as great. I entirely acknowledge the point of Deputy Eoghan Murphy. When we look at this, we ask what is the extra provided at both levels. There is no question that the extra has greater tangibility at second level but these were the factors at the time, leading to the approach we took.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Regarding the breakdown of the allowance, €118 million, does it amount to €50 million on primary supervision and the remainder on substitution at post-primary level?
Mr. Pat Burke:
At post-primary level, 37 hours is available to both. Individual schools make their own call on whether the needs for supervision are greater than the needs for substitution. There can be different balances within schools. Schools may have circumstances such that they do not need a great deal of yard supervision. In that context, a greater amount of the fund is available in that school for substitution purposes.
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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It is important to have the flexibility at the school level. In second level schools, is it a case of substitution when a colleague is absent? If a third-year teacher is absent, the students are put in the library and the teacher sits with them for that period of time.
If a teacher signs up for the hours, has the number of hours been increased to 40 for new entrants?
12:20 pm
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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If an existing teacher agrees to do 37 hours of that kind of extra work in the year, will he or she get this additional payment?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Are we looking at re-examining that allowance for existing beneficiaries?
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Thank you, Chairman.
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the delegations to the committee. I thank them for helping us in our consideration of allowances. We all know it is a complex area. I think this is one of the most straightforward areas. In truth the word "allowances" has been applied to qualifications, supervision, posts of responsibility and management duties. In my opinion the word "allowances" is a misnomer, they are a payment for work being done. Other areas may not be as clear. Generally, a school principal must be paid more than the normal teacher's salary and the fact that it has been called an allowance means we must discuss it at the meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts, but it is part of pay. There are probably historical reasons for calling it an allowance.
Of the total 58,000 teachers working in schools, some are in receipt of much higher allowances. I wish to comment on the appendix A which sets out sample positions. In example No. 4, this teacher on a basic salary of €59,000, has an honours HDip, a PhD qualification, a supervision and substitution allowance and is a principal of a large post-primary college and secretary to the board of management for which he receives an allowance of €53,186. The allowances are 47% of the total gross salary of €112,545. Would there be many principals or teachers with salaries of more than €100,000? Is that a real case?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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That is exactly what I thought. There may be a few such cases. Have the officials a figure for the number of teachers earning more than €100,000? We regularly table questions on salaries in the public service and we get the figures in the response.
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I presume a number of teachers earn between €100,000 and €110,000.
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The majority of the 58,000 teachers are not earning that, but these figures hit us.
Mr. Foghlú mentioned the school principals. I want to give credit to the principals of the large schools. The job of principal is similar to the manager of a major business. What is the staffing level of the largest schools with 1,500 plus pupils? I know of a school with 20 mainstream teachers but when one adds the other posts, the SNAs etc., one could have more than 50 staff.
Mr. Seán Foghlú:
I suspect the largest school is Gorey community school. We have just established a new second level school last year, so I expect that the community school will decrease in size slightly. They have 101 teachers, 12 special needs assistant and eight ancillary staff employed in clerical and maintenance duties. That school has more that 1,500 pupils.
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The number of SNAs in that school seems very low to me, but the principal must manage 120 staff.
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I did not see a reference to it in the schedule, but do teachers get paid for supervising exams and correcting exam papers?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The examination board is under the Department of Education and Skills. Can Mr. Foghlú give an example of a typical payment for supervising the examinations and doing the correcting of the State examination papers?
Mr. Pat Burke:
That is a different contract altogether. The State Examinations Commission is under the aegis of the Department of Education and Skills. However the Department formally ran the examinations directly. There is a process of advertising and inviting application. People are selected. There are more applicants than places for supervision, which is more attractive. Marking examinations is less attractive. I am working from recollection but typically one would end up with €2,000 for marking examination papers. It is based on a fixed sum per script and the amount varies depending on whether it is an English script and so on.
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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What is the amount for supervising the exams? Would some teacher earn €3,000 for supervision and correcting examinations?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Are there any unqualified teachers left in the system at this stage?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Are there many in that category?
Mr. Seán Foghlú:
We have unqualified teachers who are in schools as a result of the sunset clause in 2005. When the Teaching Council legislation was passed, anybody who was already teaching at that stage would have had a right to continue in his or her job because we could not legislate and require them not to be in the job. Schools are allowed to have unqualified teachers. Since that time we are looking at the implementation of section 30 of the education Act. We are looking at the extent to which teachers are unqualified. A number of teachers are in the process of registering with the Teaching Council to ensure they are registered. Other teachers are seeking to upskill themselves to become qualified teachers. In simple terms, the table shows there are 709 teachers who do not have an allowance.
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Do they have any qualification?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I presume that resource teachers who may be allocated hours in a number of different schools are paid a travelling allowance.
Who is responsible for that? It may be stated in the documentation with which we have been provided but I cannot see it. Do normal Civil Service rates apply?
12:30 pm
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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What is the position with regard to allowances for teachers who are abroad? Are there many teachers on the payroll who are teaching in Europe or elsewhere? What arrangements are in place for such individuals from the point of view of allowances?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Does the Department pay them as well?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Yes, perhaps Mr. Ó Foghlú might indicate the number of teachers involved.
We have discussed active teachers and new entrants. I wish to deal now with those who have left teaching. Many of the allowances in question are pensionable. For how long does one have to be in receipt of an allowance for the gross amount to be fully pensionable? If a person decides to pursue a doctorate in the final years of his or her teaching career to increase his or her final salary, will the allowance he or she receives be fully pensionable?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Would this apply to teachers who are not involved in substitution or supervision and who came on board with three years to go before retirement?
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
No. People were obliged to sign up to the substitution and supervision allowance either when it was introduced or on their first appointment in order to make it pensionable. It is possible to sign up to it at any stage. If, however, one did not sign up to it initially or when one commenced employment, it will not be pensionable.
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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In the context of temporary substitution, we have all heard about retired teachers being brought in to replace those who do not show up for work or who are out sick for a week. I am not referring to long-term leave in this regard. What is the position when a retired teacher, who may be in receipt of the various allowances to which I refer on top of his or her pension, returns to a school where he or she was serving as principal before he or she retired? Let us be clear that this has happened in schools. Anyone who does not realise that this is the case is not aware of what is happening. What kind of payments do such retired teachers receive when they return? Would it be the same amount as that which would be paid to a newly qualified young teacher?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The Department probably issues circulars in respect of this matter ad nauseam. How close is it to dealing with the unsatisfactory situation where people in receipt of full pensions are being brought into schools, in which they may or may not have taught previously, instead of newly qualified teachers? Principals will state it is easier to contact the former by telephone at 9.05 a.m. when a substitute is required. Is that to which I refer still happening?
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
We are monitoring the position. I do not have the details with me but we find that it tends to be in respect of the more short-term, incidental substitutions that school principals are contacting retired colleagues. In the context of long-term substitutions, schools have tended to go with individuals who are not retired. This would be in respect of more planned substitutions relating to maternity leave or long-term sick leave. It can be very difficult, either the evening before or on a particular morning, to get someone to act in substitution. That is, perhaps, where the situation arises.
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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In such circumstances, is payment made through the Department to those involved?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Will the Department's computer system contain an exact record of the payments?
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
-----secondary, community and comprehensive, it is paid through our payroll. We have an online claim system, so schools do that themselves. They key in the details and we make the payments. The VECs do it themselves so we would not have the same access to information in that regard. We regularly provide information in response to parliamentary questions in respect of this issue.
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Approximately how many of the 58,000 teachers in the country are in the VEC system?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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It is stated that 400 people are in receipt of the honorarium allowance at a total cost of €2.3865 million. There is also a secondment allowance, the total amount payable under which was €3.115 million. What is the nature of each of these allowances?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The very last item on appendix C is the honorarium allowance and the amount listed is €2.3865 million. Approximately four items up from it is the secondment allowance. The latter appears to constitute a very high proportion of the payroll. What is the nature of those allowances?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Some schools have autism classes and these operate during the month of July.
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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It is necessary for children with autism to be taught during that month in their schools. Sometimes they can be taught by their own teachers, while on other occasions they are taught by another individual. What is the purpose of the secondment allowance?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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This relates, therefore, to teachers coming into the Department from schools. Relative to people's pay, this allowance appears to be quite high.
Mr. Pat Burke:
Essentially, this would relate to instances where a significant curricular change is planned. Perhaps it could be in respect of a subject at second level such as, for example, fundamental change to the history syllabus. The way we would manage the bedding down of this would be to take some of the top history teachers from the system and make them available as a resource to schools. The top end of the allowance would tend to be people in charge of that overall service in respect of history, geography and so on. There is then a scaled allowance. The range here is from €16,000 to €10,000.
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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That is one of the more attractive individual allowances. With the exception of the allowance relating to principals, it is higher than the others.
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The Chairman will be delighted to hear that this is my final question. Are there payments for attending parent-teacher meetings? Are teachers obliged to attend such meetings outside school hours? What was the outcome of the last benchmarking exercise in the context of teachers' pay? Did those who carried it out conclude that allowances are part of such pay or that teachers would be extremely underpaid if their allowances were removed?
Mr. Pat Burke:
I will deal first with the question on parent-teacher meetings. Teachers are not paid anything extra in respect of such meetings. There was an agreement, which preceded that concluded at Croke Park, under which teachers were required to make themselves available for a number of these meetings on an after-hours basis. As part of the Croke Park agreement, we negotiated with the teachers' unions an additional quantum of hours - some 33 per annum - which can be utilised at the discretion of schools, in an after-school space, to get teachers to meet parents and so on. Previously, schools might have been closed to facilitate parent-teacher or planning meetings. The need to close schools for these meetings to take place should have diminished greatly. The type of closures to which I refer should be much less a feature of the system because the quantum of hours negotiated as part of the Croke Park agreement is used for that purpose.
The eventual outcome of the benchmarking review was to allow the allowance structure to stand. I do not believe there was any massive focus on whether allowances should be integrated into pay. Clearly, this could be done in respect of some of these allowances. As stated, however, I believe the outcome was to allow them to stand.
12:40 pm
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I have a final point emerging from what Mr. Burke said. He mentioned an extra 33 hours per annum that the Department had negotiated with teachers under the Croke Park agreement to do work outside school hours. Will those 33 hours be lost when the Croke Park deal ends in 15 months time?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The Croke Park deal will expire. I am being upfront on this. If the Department has a provision negotiated under the Croke Park agreement, it is for a maximum period of four years as that is when the agreement will expire. How does Mr. Burke reasonably expect this provision would continue after the agreement expires? How could the Department even contemplate that it would continue after that? Has the Department a problem in terms of this issue after the Croke Park agreement expires?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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What about in the teachers' agreement? Has the Department been made aware of this issue?
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Mr. Burke can understand my asking about this.
Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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One would assume that when the agreement expires everything under it will also expire. Mr. Burke might come back to us with his view on that and we will put that to representatives of congress when they appear before the committee.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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I will start with the general and then move to the specific. We got this document last week. It is a list of all the allowances and in all the Departments. On going through it, it becomes immediately obvious that the Department of Education and Skills is the winner. It is No. 1 in terms of the number of allowances, followed by the Department of Justice and Equality. It is noticeable that many of the larger Departments have very few allowances compared with the Department of Education and Skills. My general question is how did the Department end up having a list of 300 or 400 allowances? I ask the witnesses to explain the historical origins of the processes involved in the Department with regard to the introduction of a very intricate and piecemeal system of allowances dating back to the foundation of the State.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
There are two big public sector Departments, the Department of Education and Skills and the Department of Health. We have around 100,000 staff each and the number in the public sector is coming down towards 300,000, therefore, we account for about one third of the public sector. As indicated in the opening statement, the key amount of all our allowances falls into those groups for the teacher allowances which include-----
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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The Department has the highest level of payment of allowances of any Department.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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Fair enough.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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I am dealing with the culture in the Department that allowed so many allowances to be born. I am interested in the historical origins of those allowances.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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Go ahead.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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I am not interested in that. I am talking about the 300 or 400 allowances. The historic-----
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
I am about to go there. The allowances for teachers date back several decades. Responsibility allowances and qualifications allowances were introduced in 1920. Gaeltacht and teaching through Irish allowances were introduced in 1922 following Independence to attract teachers to schools in the Gaeltacht and to those where instruction was given through the medium of Irish. The children's allowance, which is applicable although it has not been for new entrants for a long time, was introduced in 1926. Teachers in each sector had separate salary scales and though the scales were relative to each other, the salaries of teachers in secondary schools were highest, those of vocational teachers were second and those of primary teachers were lowest, approximately 9% lower than those of secondary teachers.
Moving on to the findings of the Ryan tribunal in 1968, parity in regard to basic salary of all teachers was introduced then, following the report of the teachers' salaries tribunal. A new salary structure was introduced following its recommendations, including a common basic incremental salary scale and common qualifications allowances and allowances for posts of responsibility. That is the main part of the history. The tradition of the separate payments for qualifications and for posts of responsibility and principalships all date back to that time.
The other big allowance we have talked about in detail involving a cost of the €118 million is the supervision and substitution allowance which dates back to 2000 to 2002 and the dispute then. I can talk the Deputy through the various changes there have been since then in those allowances but in terms of the history lesson-----
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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No. A person, who is not knowledgeable about the processes in the Department of Education and Skills as to how these allowances were born, casting a cold eye on the different allowances introduced would come to a conclusion very quickly that, historically speaking, the Department of Education was a soft touch when dealing with the unions, one of which is probably the biggest union in the State. Many of the allowances are quite obscure. One could be dealing with an allowance for a particular VEC or an allowance for a meteorological reading. Many of the Departments did not behave like that. They did not create an allowance, they dealt with matters in terms of core pay. The way the Department has dealt with this historically has been completely different from that of many other Departments. What the Department has ended up with is a pretty complicated piecemeal system that is archaic but Mr. Ó Foghlú would probably not agree with me on that.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
The bulk of the allowances are paid effectively for promotions where we do not have a promotional structure and we pay allowances for promotions and for qualifications which effectively have become part of basic pay for new entrants. We talked about the supervision and substitution allowance. Apart from that, we would not say we are any different from any other sector in terms of the variation in the small allowances we have. The reason the spotlight is on the educational allowances is that those four big groups of allowances make up such a big proportion of teacher pay. It is done like this in many countries. The reason we have additional allowances for responsibility for positions of deputy principal, principal and so on, relate back to the nature of teaching, the long incremental scale and the fact that teachers can take up responsibilities at different stages in their carers. Traditionally it was considered that this was better. That has remained the case. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is now examining this. The most effective way to do that was to give people allowances rather than create a separate salary scale for principal or deputy principal because that would mean that after only five years a teacher might move up to a principal post whereas another teacher might only do so after 25 years, and there are differences.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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To return to the Ryan tribunal of 1968, qualification allowances were introduced after that. Can Mr. Ó Foghlú give the rationale for its introduction following the Ryan tribunal?
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
Qualifications allowances and responsibility allowances date back to 1920 before the establishment of the State. The Ryan tribunal tried to pull everything together to set out a more clear salary scale for all teachers with parity of treatment between the different types of teachers, be they in the primary, secondary or vocational sector.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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To return to 1920, Mr. Ó Foghlú has said the qualifications allowance was introduced then and it was adapted after the Ryan tribunal of 1968. What was the rationale for the introduction of the qualifications allowance going back to that time?
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
The rationale behind it was that we were trying to build up an educated teaching force and going back in time there were different requirements to become a primary teacher. To the best of my knowledge, in the 1920s there was a two-year diploma in the colleges of education. Qualification and requirements in that respect have increased. A four-year honours bachelor degree is now required for entry into the teaching profession. Therefore, requirements for entry into the profession have increased over time. We have sought to ensure that teachers upskill and we consider that to be very important. All international evidence shows that the outcomes from education depend on the effectiveness of the teaching of teachers. We very much support the upskilling of teachers and the qualifications allowance can be seen in that context as well.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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Effectively, it is an inducement for teachers to pursue further education.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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How did the Ryan tribunal change that? Did it further incentivise people or just result in the addition of money to one's salary if one pursued an advanced degree?
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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How many of the 300 or 400 allowances are pensionable?
12:50 pm
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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Is it typical throughout the public service that these obscure allowances, and there are many different allowances, would be pensionable? Many of the allowances in the various Departments throughout the public service are not pensionable.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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I want to stay on this point. Mr. Ó Foghlú said the vast majority of them are pensionable if the person stays in that position, and if it is foreseeable that someone would stay in it. I do not believe that in the case of many of these allowances that are pensionable one could foresee that somebody would stay in that position, for example, the warden of Trinity Hall allowance, the personal medical consultant on-call allowance and the transport liaison officer in the VECs allowance. That amounts to €300,000. I am not sure one can make that deduction. How would Mr. Ó Foghlú make that call with regard to a pensionable allowance? He has not answered my question as to whether that was typical throughout the public service.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
The Deputy has highlighted a couple of specific examples. Only about 2% of our pay bill comprises these smaller allowances. That is not atypical of the public service. In terms of the warden of Trinity Hall, and I know there is a specific person, that is not pensionable and that allowance is personal to the holder. When that holder departs from the job that allowance will not be in place. We have worked through a lot of processes with university allowances.
The transport liaison officer, TLO, allowance is pensionable. We are in an industrial relations process currently with the chief executive officers of vocational education committees because that responsibility has ended. We are in the middle of the various industrial relations mechanisms of the State. We hope to have an outcome of a hearing on that in November and therefore we cannot talk in too much detail about that. There are a couple of legal cases around that also but we are working on ceasing that where we can.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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I have some specific questions. Going back to historical origins, an allowance listed is the allowance payable to teachers of apprentices in Dún Laoghaire and County Cork Vocational Education Committees in the post primary area. Can Mr. Ó Foghlú give me an idea how that allowance was created?
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
It is payable to about 17 people. It was introduced in 2001 for teachers in the two VECs who are wholly or mainly employed in the teaching of apprentices. It was introduced due to the fact that the main bulk of apprenticeship instruction is delivered by academic staff in institutes of technology but in these two cases it was delivered in those settings.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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It was what?
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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I come back to the question as to whether it was typical that these allowances are pensionable throughout the public service.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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Mr. Ó Foghlú said the vast majority of these allowances are pensionable.
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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Why is it that in some Departments many of the allowances are not pensionable but in the Department of Education and Skills they would be?
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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Again, to put it in a historical context, how does this list arise? What is the process? Is it senior officials dealing with the unions in many cases? What is the typical process with regard to the origin of these allowances? Is it done by ministerial order or legislation? How have these arisen since the foundation of the State? Was it someone within the Department dealing with the unions in particular?
Mr. Pat Burke:
Yes, probably in its broadest sense. In terms of the ones that go to teachers, there is a structure called the Teachers' Conciliation Council which is an industrial relations forum to deal with teacher issues of an industrial relations nature. That is probably the forum where a claim would first be initiated and behind that forum there is adjudication and ultimately, arbitration which can be binding in its effect.
To come back to why it would happen, sometimes it would be a good idea to give an allowance as opposed to the alternative. An example might serve this question. If there is, say, a general operative grade and the generality of people are engaged in work of a broadly similar nature but a particular need arises which is by any standards significantly above what would be sought from others - let us say somebody is working a piece of elaborate machinery - essentially one has two choices. If that payment is integrated into the rate for the grade, everyone gets it and that would be folly. One would not want to do that. One might have a second choice which would be to create a new grade. That leaves one with a situation where there would be a huge multiplicity of grades. There are negatives in that as well because people might have a restricted concept of what their work is and so on. In some circumstances the solution, assuming the case is bona fide, would be to pay by way of allowance, which essentially visits the benefit on the individual who is doing the work rather than creating an artificial lift, so to speak. That is probably-----
John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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I understand Mr. Burke's point. I disagree. It is a recipe for disaster. In terms of any deviation from his core purpose with regard to work there is an avenue that is acted upon by a union, in some cases by a particular VEC, to start negotiations with the Department to seek an additional payment or allowance. That is how it appears to me. I understand Mr. Burke's point but I disagree with it. What his Department, his predecessors and different Departments have done is created an avenue for the creation of allowances that in some cases can no longer be justified. Historically speaking, I would come at this from a different perspective. It is convoluted, archaic and does not stand up to modern times with regard to the way government should be run. I am not taking away from the job people do within the education sector but administratively and fiscally, this list does not make sense.
With regard to the Croke Park agreement, the Department is negotiating approximately €16 million out of the €600 million and therefore we are talking about a limited number of these allowances being in play. I thank the witnesses.
Paul Connaughton (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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The witnesses are welcome. I have some specific questions. Many of the allowances have been dealt with but there is one in the VEC sector called the script marking allowance. I understand that has been retained. How long has that allowance been in operation? When was it first introduced?
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
We put that in the list to cover the VEC and the institutes of technology, IOT, sectors but there is script marking in both IOTs and universities. The script marking allowance in the IOTs goes back to 1976 and an agreed conciliation report following a claim from the Teachers Union of Ireland, TUI, and it is payable to certain lecturing staff. It is around €1,000 a year. There are rates per-----
Paul Connaughton (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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How is it decided who gets it and who does not?
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
The people who are marking the scripts for terminal exams. If it was €8 per script they would get €8 per script.
Where we have moved to semesterisation, there has been a move from paying €8 per script at the end of the year to €4 per script twice yearly. The allowance is also payable in the university sector and it is part of the overall €9 million. Universities have similar arrangements but the allowance is not payable to professors and associate professors. It is payable to more junior academic staff.
1:00 pm
Paul Connaughton (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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Do the individuals who can avail of it change on a yearly basis?
Paul Connaughton (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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The change to the pay grade for new entrants to teaching was introduced in September.
Paul Connaughton (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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On that basis, is it possible for someone who is not yet fully qualified, but who may be on the old pay scale while substituting for a teacher, to continue on that pay scale when newly qualified?
Paul Connaughton (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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If a trainee in college had been called in for a week, he or she would have been paid according to the old pay scale. When qualified, will he or she be paid at the same starting rate as everyone else?
Paul Connaughton (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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After being qualified.
Paul Connaughton (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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There was an industrial dispute in 2001 or 2002 pertaining to some of the allowances that were introduced. How many allowances were sought at the time? How many were agreed to and how many were turned down?
Paul Connaughton (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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That was the bargaining chip against the 30% increase that was being sought.
Paul Connaughton (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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Were any other allowances agreed at that time?
Paul Connaughton (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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I will leave it at that because we have dealt with many of the allowances at this stage.
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The meeting with the Department of Defence and the representative bodies of the Defence Forces was very productive. I understand the representatives of the personnel in the Defence Forces are not covered by congress. However, it is very useful to have them here. I acknowledge we cannot compel representatives to come here but I am aware that congress will attend. When the congress representatives are here, we will be examining the entire array. The members pay subscriptions to the teaching unions and I would have loved a process of interaction with those unions on this matter today. The exchange with the Defence Forces was very healthy and constructive. I know there is nothing that the Chairman can do other than extend the invitation.
John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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We covered that at the opening of the meeting. The representatives were invited and they chose to be represented by congress. That reflects on negotiations that might take place outside this meeting. It was their choice. I would not like it to be presented that they would not attend.
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I am certainly not presenting it as that; I am just saying it would be constructive and helpful, and in the interest of both the professions and this committee, to have an exchange about the specific sector. As the Chairman said, it is the choice of the representatives in question.
John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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They are in ongoing negotiations.
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I am very much aware of that.
Significant work is taking place under the Croke Park agreement. I am aware of some of the changes happening in schools in my constituency as a result of it. Could Mr. Ó Foghlú give us a broad outline of the tangible benefits of the changes made in the education sector under the Croke Park agreement? It would be useful to put these on the record.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
Additional working hours are being introduced in schools. We touched on this already. There are also additional working hours in the higher education sector. This results in increased teaching and lecturing time and the effective elimination of school closures. We are doing a verification exercise with the schools and hope to have the result in the near future.
We estimate that teachers are working 2 million additional hours, thereby reducing the amount of school planning and the number of staff meetings during tuition time, and reducing the incidence of school closures. We have a costing for that but I will not refer to it now.
Within higher education, flexibility in the organisation of working time has been a very significant issue. Lecturing staff are available to deliver an additional two hours of lectures per week, resulting in a saving of 150,000 hours. Under the terms of the agreement, there is a new revised contract for academic staff in the universities, which provides for additional time and facilitates teaching and learning in the universities. There are 100,000 additional hours.
The reduction in budgets in the face of the increase in student numbers has enabled the institutions to live within funding, although they are extremely challenged in this regard. We have reduced the number of posts of responsibility in schools by approximately 6,000, effectively by filling them only in very rare cases. We put in place some very effective redeployment arrangements. This means that, as pupil-teacher ratios have increased, or other teacher allocations have decreased, we have been able to redeploy. This has been working very effectively at second level, resulting in the redeployment of 262 teachers, the surplus at the start of the 2011-12 school year.
We have very effective redeployment arrangements at primary level. There were some in place already but we have managed to enhance them. We have introduced a number of key initiatives. The single student grant scheme is an example of a shared service being introduced. There is much common procurement, especially in higher education. We are moving on to consider shared services. I could elaborate further but what I have said suggests the high level of activity.
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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That is useful. There can often be one-way traffic when we are discussing the Croke Park agreement. It is healthy at the outset to list some of the examples of change management in the sector in these difficult times. It is important to acknowledge this.
Let me return to the issue of supervision and retired teachers re-entering the classroom. This is a bugbear of the taxpayer and every new young teacher. What is the official position of the Department on supervision? I understand that if a teacher rings a school principal at 8.55 a.m. to say he or she will be out for a day owing to sickness, the principal is obliged to find a teacher quickly. In this instance, there is a little more justification for ringing a former teacher down the road, although I do not accept it. What are the actual criteria of the Department and what does the circular state?
Mr. Pat Burke:
From recollection, schools are exhorted to have put together a list of people who are qualified and available. That does not include retired people. The schools are asked to draw from this list in the first instance. It is only in circumstances where this is absolutely impossible that a retired person can be called in. This is preferable to calling an unqualified person and the approach is reasonable. The unqualified person would be last to be called. There is no doubt that this position has been espoused strongly because issues arise as to the capacity to legislate in this area. It would be legally tricky. I would not underestimate the impact of retired staff being classified as new entrants. Effectively, in financial terms, the incentive for people who are retired to return to school to do supervisory work has been diminished considerably. The main measure is probably the very strong exhortation of schools in this regard. One should not underestimate the peer-pressure dimension. Given that so many young teachers are looking for jobs, schools would be quite brave to bring back retired staff if there were a number of young teachers available locally and perhaps known to the principals.
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Is the Department able to tell from its systems and data when a retired member of staff is brought back? While the Department can issue circulars, does it have any figures?
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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While I am not committing Mr. Ó Foghlú to a figure, could he state whether the percentage is very small?
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
It has reduced. Obviously, with the retirements last February, we had a particular dispensation to allow teachers to remain on the staff until their students had completed the leaving certificate examinations, for example.
While we can provide the committee with the details, the number is small and has declined. However, there still is a certain low level.
1:10 pm
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Presumably, it is a cultural issue.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
Presumably, it mostly concerns immediate needs, where even having a list might not enable one to get someone in with short notice and where, instead of trying to look for anyone, they are actually prevailing on someone and begging that person to come in. That is our understanding of it.
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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It would be great if the Secretary General were to forward the figures to the committee.
On the issue of substitution, on which the Secretary General has already touched with my colleagues, I refer to special report No. 67 of the Comptroller and Auditor General. The Secretary General should outline the reason the cost of substitution has grown so much in recent years from an estimation by the Comptroller and Auditor General in 2007 of approximately €50 million to approximately €118 million in 2011. The second and more important question is what guarantees are in place that these hours are being met? Does this not remain the responsibility of school management?
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
As the Comptroller and Auditor General's report related to second level, the figure has not really grown. It is approximately at the same level and while there actually have been some reductions in the substitution and supervision allowance, we also have more teachers. However, the spend is approximately the same. Arising from the Comptroller and Auditor General's report, we tightened the reporting requirements from schools in respect of both the use of the hours by teachers and the use of the grant by the school where teachers were not opting in to the substitution and supervision scheme. These arrangements have become a lot tighter following the review. Moreover, in the year in which the review took place, the Department had not tightened up on substitutions to the same extent. We reduced the availability of substitution in certain instances. We reduced its availability for official school business, in particular, which has put the onus back on schools to ensure the 37 hours are maximised.
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Members of the committee have been having a discussion with almost all Secretaries General on the issue of allowances versus core pay. I meet a great number of public servants and teachers in my clinic who tell me they feel very aggrieved that allowances are being discussed when, in their view, their allowances effectively are core pay. Those responsible in the public sector, both at political and Civil Service level, never really grappled with the issue of rectifying core pay and therefore, we have this complex, convoluted system of allowances. What work is under way in the Department to streamline allowances? For example, I refer to the qualification allowance. One takes it as a given that one expects all teachers to be qualified. The Secretary General has outlined to the committee that the Department is weeding out unqualified teachers and that work is ongoing in that regard. Why can the qualification allowance not form part of core pay? Does it not constitute core pay?
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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It was to apply from then on.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
It was to apply from then on and that has changed slightly in the new dispensation for new entrants. It is more difficult to do this for existing teachers because they have a range of allowances. It would not be on our priority list for abolition for that reason. There is a range of payments and individuals may already have their doctoral degrees. I acknowledge not many have doctoral degrees, but they may have a masters degree. Consequently, to seek to have a standard amount, we would be obliged to move to a middle amount, which would involve decreasing some and increasing others.
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Does the Secretary General see scope for including other allowances in core pay?
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
As indicated, in respect of the principal and deputy principal allowances, we are having some initial discussions with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on whether a different system is possible. However, we are not yet at the stage where we even have an agreed approach on which we could have discussions with the unions. It is a highly complicated issue because someone may have moved to be a principal after a small number of years and, therefore, the question arises of placing them at an advantage, if one has in place a scale for principals. However, we certainly are looking at the matter.
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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In respect of allowances, people obviously get some allowances for expenses incurred. People get other allowances which should not be called allowances for taking on additional responsibilities and acquiring additional qualifications. One gets them in the private sector also. Then there are the others which potentially drag down the system, although I acknowledge they might only account for a relatively small proportion. I was looking through some of them which can be found in the supplementary business case submitted to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. I refer to Nos. 86 to 89, the eating on-site allowances. Is this literally an allowance people are being given for eating in their workplace where there is no canteen facility? I note that in the case of maintenance staff in County Dublin VEC, 69 staff are getting it. While it is not pensionable, it is costing us €34,224. In the case of the DIT, 170 staff are getting the eating on-site allowance, at a cost of €80,750. There is a much smaller amount recorded for the caretaker in County Mayo VEC of €1,496. Workshop attendants in Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology also are mentioned. The delegates should explain what is the eating on-site allowance.
Mr. Philip Crosby:
The principle behind these allowances is that in certain areas staff are working on-site and there is no provision of canteen facilities. Consequently, they would be required either to go out somewhere else or to return to base and lose time. In the VEC sector and among other employers in the education sector where this is done, it usually is parallel to or a follow-on from the local authority sector, in which such a practice may have been approved by Labour Court or in arbitration judgments and so on. In general, they have arisen from a decision or an adjudication, rather than an agreement.
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Is this something that, in general, has originated in the local authority sector?
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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This genuinely is not a flippant question, but the caretaker in County Mayo VEC gets the allowance; is that because County Mayo VEC has been more proactive in seeking payment of an allowance? This is not to single out County Mayo VEC, but is one to take it that every other caretaker in every other VEC has on-site facilities in which to eat?
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I do not expect Mr. Crosby to have the data to hand. Not to speak for him, I refer to the concept espoused by Deputy Deasy to the effect that some allowances have sprung up. The committee needs to try to get a handle on whether there is an element of some local sectors within the education system perhaps being more proactive in the pursuit of allowances than others. This is a subject to which members may need to return. However, I find it hard to believe it is just one caretaker in a single VEC who does not have somewhere to eat lunch. Do the witnesses have any thoughts in this regard?
Mr. Pat Burke:
In general, the protagonist here, for want of a better word, will be the union. It would not be usual for the administrative side of the VEC to push this issue. As my colleague indicated, some of these allowances, where they apply in VECs, are closely linked with practice in the local authority sector. In fact, the education sector has a very limited number of such allowances, certainly in money value terms.
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Again, I am picking out these allowances in the context of the comments I have made, which is that many allowances seem logical because someone is doing additional work but others simply do not make sense to me. I refer to allowances paid in the VEC and institute of technology sectors, namely, the junior caretaker allowance, the senior caretaker allowance and then another junior caretaker allowance. The witnesses should explain what are these allowances for which there are total annual costs of €25,000, €15,000 and €29,000.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
These are cross-sectoral allowances which stem from the disparity in pay between general operatives in Dublin and higher order attendants outside Dublin. They are akin to pay levels in the local authority and health sectors. It is a cross-sectoral issue between ourselves, the health sector and local government and it is to even up pay in the same jobs, depending on location.
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I take the Secretary General's point, although it is slightly confusing for me to take in what it means.
Mr. Philip Crosby:
It is broader than the education sector. Much of this has its history in the fact that this pertains to general operatives and higher order attendants who are relatively low-paid staff. While the Deputy should not hold me to the precise details, at some point one of these groups of staff received a pay determination that leapfrogged them ahead of another group. Thereafter, use was made of the joint labour committee mechanism.
There were mechanisms put in place to give allowances across multiple sectors and adjust for that without creating a scala mobileof people moving up pay scales all the time. That is from where those allowances tended to come.
1:20 pm
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Regarding the dirt money allowance which is paid in the university sector at a cost of €48,298 to maintenance and ground staff, I presume it is for dirt on their boots. Is this another anomaly where the system fails to rectify people’s pay levels and gives them allowances to bump them up in line with others? It is certainly a badly named allowance.
Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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This is an issue we are coming across time and again. First, the allowances are badly named. I accept there may be a historical reason but if one were to tell the taxpayer that maintenance staff get a dirt money allowance, it does not exactly instil confidence. Second, the taxpayer would wonder what additional duties are involved in this allowance which would not be part of the day-to-day job of maintenance staff. The dirt money allowance and the eating-on-site allowance, for example, are a reflection of a system, particularly when the country had the money, that failed to put in place proper and more simple pay structures. As a result, we have this convoluted system.
Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I welcome the delegations. In the Department of Defence the interaction between unions and management worked well and it provided an interesting partnership dynamic. That is what the committee is doing in examining these allowances.
Up to 90% of teachers, 58,000, in primary, secondary and the vocational education committee schools, are claiming two allowances. It strikes me that the bulk of this is actually core pay. What is the percentage of teachers with honours degrees? Teaching is one of the more noble professions. Having a good body of teachers is key to the future. Everyone will agree that, on reflection, one of the people who made a significant impression on us when we were growing up was a good teacher. Having a good body of teachers cannot be undervalued.
However, we need to have an allowance system that is evolving. For example, with growing obesity among young people, there does not seem to be an allowance to encourage teachers to get involved in sporting activities in school. In many cases, sports coaching in school is done by teachers staying back after school with no allowance. I feel the teachers’ representative bodies are not putting forward realistic proposals for these allowances and the sporting case is one example of this.
Many of these allowances should go but it must also be realised many of them are core pay. Around the whole debate about the Croke Park agreement and allowances, there has been a terrible lack of common sense. When we discussed allowances with the Department of Defence, we noted many of them were outdated. In the case of the Department of Education and Skills, some of them go back 90 and 100 years. I would like some of these allowances to be redirected into areas such as tackling obesity through sporting activity.
We have tremendous teachers and schools. We should use the Croke Park agreement as a vehicle to achieve a fit-for-purpose sector. It should not be about going for the headline figures in allowances which in many cases are not material amounts anyway. They may look good for the media but they show very little. I want to see value for money for the taxpayer, parents and children.
The qualifications allowance makes up 44% of all allowances. Along with the supervision and two management allowances, they make up 95% of all allowances. In essence, this is core pay. While the Department may see it is a management position, these allowances have done a disservice to those working in the public sector. There are also allowances that should go.
Is there any allowance to encourage teachers to get involved in sport for children? Why is physical education not part of the primary school curriculum? When schools take on a substitute teacher, they seem to take on retired teachers. Why can they not take on unemployed teaching graduates? Is there a monitoring system in place to ask schools to explain why they took on a retired teacher instead of an unemployed graduate as a substitute teacher?
Where does the Department stand on the arbitration process on the allowances submitted by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform? There is much brouhaha around the Croke Park agreement. It must be accepted these allowances are part of core pay. The exercise the committee is conducting should remove those allowances that are outdated or unnecessary. However, those involved in core pay should be re-analysed as reimbursements. Allowances should also be updated to deal with the modern schooling environment. Can allowances be redirected to provide, for example, information and communication technology or second foreign language teaching? I want to see these allowances becoming fit for purpose. I want to see the public sector churning. We have tremendous talent within the teaching profession which I have seen with my own children’s experience of it.
I cannot overstate the importance of primary schooling. It sets the foundations for children and we cannot compromise on quality. Will Mr. Ó Foghlú give an overview? How many teachers have honours degrees?
1:30 pm
Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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That can be lost but, equally, I would like to probe their role and to ensure it is fit for purpose.
Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Therefore, well over half have an honours degree.
Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Do the younger graduates in the main hold honours degrees?
Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Is that a prerequisite?
Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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For primary and secondary school?
Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I welcome that.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
We are supportive of encouraging teacher engagement in the diverse curriculum in primary and post-primary, whether it is ICT or PE , and the development of our children. We do not share the view that it has to be done by means of allowances. We see this as part of the overall curriculum. PE is part of the curriculum in primary and post-primary.
Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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It is down to individual teachers.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
Having said that, individual teachers make a real difference and we all know that from our own children as well as on a system wide basis. It is individual teachers and it is the culture in individual schools led by principals. Individual teachers make the difference by running the team or whatever. We have some substitution available for that during the school day but much of this activity takes place outside the school day and we are indebted to those teachers.
Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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It should be the Department's business to ensure there is a structured approach to PE and sport in the context of the advance of obesity and the rapid increase in childhood diabetes. I want a school system that is fit for purpose. Children are going into a world in which ICT is very important. Sport is also very important for a range of reasons, including individual social skills and general fitness and the future costs to the health system. Has the Department considered ensuring schools allocate some of their budgets to recruit PE teachers?
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
PE is compulsory in the primary and post-primary curricula. I do not say we do not have an interest; we have a keen interest in ensuring health promotion and so on. A number of areas in the curriculum are vital but individual schools also have to have their own take on these things. For example, in the junior cycle reform, on some of the short courses, schools may decide to focus on particular aspects of the curriculum but we cannot control from Athlone, Tullamore or Dublin what individual schools do. We have an enabling framework in place. Our aim is an increasingly enabling curriculum with schools making choices and teachers being empowered within that. To be fair, the teachers and the principals do this and we have all seen great examples of teachers doing activities outside schools as well as compulsory activities such as parent-teacher meetings. I refer to the engagement with children. That is very important.
Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Some of the allocation to schools should be put aside to bring in a qualified PE teacher to deal with children.
I refer to transparency regarding substitution teachers and the monitoring process the Department has in place at the end of a month. There may be genuine cases where it is not possible or feasible to bring in an unemployed, newly-qualified teacher, which should be the priority. Can the Department put a monitoring and control process in place?
Mr. Pat Burke:
I agree with the Deputy's underlying point that the court of public opinion is the important one. A number of things are about to happen in the not too distant future. We are moving to a situation where schools will only be empowered to pay qualified registered teachers. We have issued circulars relating to the requirement that schools prioritise unemployed teachers and so on. There is an inevitable progression to getting into a greater publication space in due course in regard to these matters but we also need to be conscious in doing that. We do not want to pillory schools that have no other choice on a Monday morning, such as schools in a remote location, that cannot get anyone and if they do not get the retired person in-----
Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Part of the problem with allowances and so on is communication, which is diabolical and poor. The substitute teacher issue would be rectified by putting a process in place whereby at the end of every month, the principals give a reason they employed a specific teacher. The Department sees the payments going through. That would be transparent and it would give comfort to the principals. I ask the officials to take this on board.
Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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That is something I ask the officials to take on board. I thank them very much.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank the officials for attending and for the volume and quality of the documentation that was forwarded. It is helpful for these discussions because it is all about the detail, as I have learned during the three days we have been examining allowances. Earlier, reference was made to officials being involved in the creation of this system in the past. I am conscious that when officials appear before us, they are the incarnation of politicians past.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I was not aware that Mr. Burke would take it as a compliment but I am gratified that he has.
Much, if not all, of what has been done is the result of political choices. Officials present the choices and other people make the decisions. It is not the case that they or their predecessors set out to create a system such as this independent of the fact that Ministers head up Departments. They are present to respond to questions regarding the implementation of this and give their views. I say that in response to comments made earlier.
I refer to the different examples in appendix A of the documentation and a theme other colleagues and I have been probing during these sessions, namely, the allocation of allowances per income cohort. I ask the officials to give us an understanding of where the recipients of the allowances are. I would like to double check one issue, which is the payment of degree allowances. When I look at this sheet in five years, the payments for the qualifications will be gone for new teachers who are being hired at the moment. Am I correct in that assumption?
1:40 pm
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I make the assumption that a principal's allowance is not an allowance, but a payment for doing a bigger job. We then end up with something that is consistent with what we saw in the Defence Forces. Am I right in saying that once the principal's allowance is stripped out, as one goes up the income scale the percentage of one's total income that consists of allowances decreases?
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I am stripping that out.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I am stripping that out and putting the view on it that it is not an allowance. I believe it is a payment for doing a bigger job.
Mr. Pat Burke:
The Deputy's thesis is correct. As one moves up the scale, stripping out what in truth are not allowances but promotion posts, having regard to the fact that qualifications will no longer be a feature of the landscape, yes, the reality is that the proportion of allowances accounted for in one's overall pay diminishes as one goes up. They are progressive in that.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I am conscious that much work was done in preparation for the meeting. I will ask for two small pieces of additional work that the witnesses might share with us. I ask them to produce a table similar to appendix A showing how things might look in five years when more of our new teachers are within the system. I also ask them to produce this sheet and break out the principal's allowance and extra officeholder's allowances from the analysis. This will allow us to see clearly where the allowances are going by income and by tier for school staff.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
We will do both those things. I would add, looking at the examples and percentages, that although it goes up from 15% in the example, in fact the average allowance in the teaching cohort as a whole is 16%, but because of the allowances coming in with increased responsibility we wanted to give worked examples showing the different types of increased responsibility.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I want to bring that to a conclusion. I say we should take that piece out in order to understand the situation now and for the future. A conclusion that could come out of our work is greater clarity on where exactly the allowances go. I would be grateful if the witnesses could share that with us.
Having clarified that, I wish to return to a point Mr. Burke made earlier in the session. He talked about the pros and cons of dealing with additional work through allowances as opposed to moving people on to new salary scales. I ask him to outline again the merits and demerits of that general policy choice.
Mr. Pat Burke:
The first thing to say is that we would all like a situation in which people are very flexible in the type of additional work they will take on, but in the best of all worlds there are limitations on that and ultimately there are legitimate limitations. I was using the example of a general operative. Let us say we have thousands of those and we want one of them, or a number of them, to do kango hammer duties or something that is significant, additional and onerous, for which we acknowledge additional recompense is required or is justified. Let us take it we have made those leaps and concluded that this warrants more. My thesis is that to consider upgrading the pay of all general operatives so that anyone we ask to do this would now have to do it would be folly. We do not want to do that. It would be very costly - needlessly costly. That is one route. We rule that out. The second possible route is to create a new grade of general operative kango hammer. We do not want to do that either because there would genuinely be a lot of public criticism and we would be having another session of this kind in ten years' time in which the Deputy would be asking us how come we have 10,000 grades in the public service - and he would be right. So that would be very foolish. I am working on the premise that the payment is actually merited based on additionality and so on. The third approach is to pay something called an allowance. "Allowance" is not a great word now, and maybe it needs to be called something else. Maybe it is a supplementary pay scale, or whatever. In policy terms and - to use a phrase that was mentioned earlier - in common sense terms it can often be the best way of doing things.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Choices such as this have been made in the past to avoid increases across entire worker groups, which of course would be difficult to justify.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I wanted to tease that out because it goes to the heart of much of the discussion we are having.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
I wish to make an additional point. When we come to redeployment, which is a challenge we are being faced with now and which we are managing quite well with teachers, for grades in the public service it is very difficult. If there is a temporary allowance for a type of work, it is easier to redeploy somebody so that they do not do that work and they no longer receive a temporary allowance. However, if they have moved into a specific grade with a specific definition, it makes redeployment more challenging. I am not saying it would not be possible, but we are actually in the business at the moment - and will be for the foreseeable future - of looking at redeployment as a major issue.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Okay.
I wish to discuss appendix C. Appendix A gives real-life examples and provides a micro-view of where the allowances go, while appendix C gives the macro-view. I want to ensure I understand this table. The principal row indicates that on average 23.4% of a principal's total salary consists of an allowance. Is that correct?
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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For a principal.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Does that include his or her allowance for being a principal?
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Can I ask Mr. Ó Foghlú to give us this table again-----
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Yes, that is fine. Can I ask the Department to produce the table for us again with that allowance omitted? It would allow us to ascertain on average how much of a principal's salary consists of other allowances that are not related to the additional work involved in being a principal.
With regard to the 3.9% figure for supervision and substitution allowance, does that mean that for the average teacher, 3.9% of his or her salary consists of the substitution and supervision allowance?
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I want to make sure I have that clarification. For a teacher who is doing that work, the allowance makes up 4% of his or her annual salary?
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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That strips out the teachers who are not doing it.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I understand. On the second page, I assume the principle is the same - although that is the wrong phrase to use.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Therefore the total compensation is 3.9% for someone in receipt of the 35-year allowance.
1:50 pm
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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It would really help us get a grip on the big picture if Mr. Ó Foghlú could update those two tables in the way we discussed.
From the big picture, I want to go to micro issues and go back to a theme explored by Deputy Harris. He lightly touched on the table entitled Department of Education, details of allowances paid in the university sector, which Mr. Burke also raised. I will wait until that page comes up on screen. Can Mr. Ó Foghlú see it?
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I am referring to row 47 of that table - Mr. Ó Foghlú might be on the wrong document. This is the Excel spreadsheet he sent to us. It is the submission to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. It relates to the university sector. Row 47 relates to tutor payments to people working in universities. A tutor role is pretty frequent within our third-level establishments. Why can the existing academic pay grades and salary scales not accommodate a post as common as the tutor post within our colleges?
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Let me see if I can get another example. Out of all the rows on the sheet, I had to pick that particular one. I will tread more carefully.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Let me try again. Is the head of department allowance going?
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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It is on row 30 in the same document.
Mr. Philip Crosby:
Normally, we would expect the head of a university department to be somebody at professor level. If somebody is not at that level, for example, if he or she is a lecturer or senior lecturer who acts up and takes on a head of department role, the allowance would be paid in that case. Effectively, they are taking on higher duties in the professorial space so they would be paid an allowance for that.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I assume that analysis would apply to many of the allowances shown. Why do we not just put them on to the professorial scale?
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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If they went on to the salary scale for professor, would the Department be precluded from doing that?
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The Department could not put somebody on a salary scale when he or she was a professor and take him or her off when he or she stopped being one? I want to tease this out.
Mr. Pat Burke:
It is not unlike a Civil Service Department or anywhere else when somebody steps up for a period of time. Rather than promote them substantively which effectively locks them in, one gives them what is called an acting-up allowance for the period in question.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I was going to ask that question. Before I do, let us look at row 65 of that document where we have the kango money allowance. This goes to the heart of the difficulty we face, which is that one has an approach that covers a head of department allowance and then under the same "allowance" heading, one finds the kango money allowance. Three people within the education sector are in receipt of that allowance. Do we still need allowances like this?
Mr. Philip Crosby:
Tool allowances remain quite common for general operative grades across local government, health and education. Again, those are three individuals in a particular university. The university has probably christened it a kango hammer allowance because that is what they are doing but it is a variant on the tool allowance concept that is still widely used.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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If we were to draw a curve of the number of people in receipt of an allowance and the cash value of the allowance - perhaps we should do this as part of our report - we would find the high value allowances which lots of people are drawing and then it would tail off and leave a very long tail of lots of allowances that only a few people claim, like many of those here. That long tail is where much of the difficulty lies. It creates a perception among taxpayers and those who comment on this that a very large amount of allowances are being claimed. However, they are being claimed by very few people. Is there not an alternative way of tackling something like, for example, the kango money allowance?
Mr. Pat Burke:
The better way is that instead of having differentiated kango hammer and power drill allowances, one would have a greater grouping of allowances and, by definition, less of them. That is something that might be more understandable to the public. I see the Deputy's point that there is a difficulty with the public perception of some of this. Probably the biggest element and what accounts for the vast bulk of the money is allowances that are very proximate to core pay. If the preponderance of a grade are all drawing a certain type of allowance, the reality is that for that grade, because that allowance pretty much obtains for everyone, it is about getting as close to core pay as possible.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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That is why I spent the majority of my time trying to tease out matters. If we were to assume that a principal's allowance is not really an allowance, which is the point made by Mr. Burke and which I accept, and we stripped that out from our analysis, we would see a situation where the vast majority of the allowances, given that the degree allowance will change, will be received by people who are not at the top of the teaching apex. They are not principals, assistant principals and so on. They are either in the classroom or doing additional duties within third-level colleges. It is not just a question of perception. One concern I would have is that where there is a kango or dirty money allowance, it could create the feeling that if I do something else, I am entitled to an allowance for it, for example, if I wielded another kind of hammer. I do not want to feed into the cliché of this debate. I am just using it as an example to make the point.
I could make it about the boiler allowance or another allowance. My point is that if one gets an allowance for doing one thing, one should also get an allowance for doing something else.
2:00 pm
Mr. Pat Burke:
I take that point. If the Croke Park agreement means anything, it must mean much greater preparedness to go outside the lines of demarcation. As a public service we should require this in any event and therefore allowances, or any extra payment mechanism which obtains for the future, should logically only apply in a situation of real stretch where there is something significantly additional that almost takes a person's activity out of the realm of his or her grade so to speak.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Does Mr. Pykett have additional information on this point?
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Pykett for making this point. A point on which we should deliberate is whether the existence of some of these allowances runs opposite to the spirit the Croke Park agreement is trying to develop, as Mr. Pykett said. I am on the board of management of my local school. My children are in a primary school and I am also involved with secondary schools in my constituency. We have fantastic teachers and more than many others, they deal at the front line with the social consequences of the trauma the country is in. There is a great degree of sensitivity among them to the discussion we are having at present and I understand why. I hope anybody watching this will have seen us try to understand the allowances and make points grounded in data. We have tried to tease through this. I thank the witnesses for coming in and for all the work they shared with us.
Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:
I wish to clarify one point. Earlier I stated the vast majority of allowances are pensionable. The vast majority of allowance payments are pensionable. Many of the smaller allowances are not pensionable, as members will see from the information. I do not want anyone to misunderstand. Overall, the allowance spend is mostly pensionable but quite a few of the smaller allowances are not.
Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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It goes back to the point about the long tail, which is that allowances are specific, low in cash value and claimed by a small number of people. This is the point on which we must move the debate forward. We must recognise different forces drive the bulk of allowances but these forces are different again to the forces driving the long tail.
John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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I thank members for their contributions and I thank the witnesses for coming before the committee and contributing to what was a very constructive exchange of views.