Mr. Declan Glynn:

To be specific, I am talking about section 105 of the 1930 Act, as well as sections 7 and 8 of the Vocational Education (Amendment) Act 1944. Moreover, this is dealt with in section 63 of the Bill because, ironically, these rights are being maintained for the staff of institutes of technology. Consequently, the right to a sworn inquiry prior to any potential dismissal is maintained for lecturers in institutes of technology and in Dublin Institute of Technology because, decades ago, they used to be employees of VECs. Ironically, the Bill protects the smallest grouping, who are erstwhile employees of VECs but does not protect current employees of VECs.

To answer the other questions, in respect of the casualisation of teaching, one straightforward measure can be taken immediately, which is that when a full block of hours that constitutes a single job arises, there should be no impediment to that work being offered initially, ab initio, as a permanent teaching job. Even where there are full units of work, permanent whole-time teaching jobs are not being created in the vocational education system at present. This is despite there being no impediment to so doing and this is a highly significant issue for us. As for the Chair's own question regarding teachers transferring out of ETBs, on the whole the differences and qualifications between vocational teachers and teachers in the voluntary secondary system are so negligible as not to be a matter of great concern. Some decades ago, there might have been a significantly greater proportion of teachers in the vocational system who did not possess higher diplomas in education or the current postgraduate diploma equivalent, but that is not the current dispensation. Consequently, we do not perceive this to be a particular difficulty. As for the composition of boards, we intend to table three matters. First, it is an 18-person board and in broad terms, the TUI believes; there should be three thirds, that is, local authority members should comprise one third, one third should come from the teacher and staff side and one third from the parents, adult learners and other groupings side.