Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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This covers a huge range of areas and forms a huge bulk of the budget, so many issues come under it rather than simply the salary amounts of primary school teachers. I ask the Minister to comment on the issue of pay equality. Is he willing to advocate at the Cabinet table for pay equality for newly qualified primary school teachers? In fact, they are nearly newly qualified at this stage because many of them are developing into well-thought-of and long-established members of their schools. I call them young teachers but really they are newly qualified, or nearly newly qualified. That is why they have become such a voice and such a vocal campaign on this issue. There are so many of them now, and I think they feel that the Minister needs to advocate for them, that they should not have to just rely on themselves or their unions and that either the Minister or the Minister of State, Deputy Halligan, should take up the cudgels on their behalf at Cabinet to seek pay equality because it is a basic principle of equality. It is the kind of policy nobody could really be against, in truth, so why has the Minister been reticent to commit to it?

My next questions also come under this subhead. The Minister has said the additional teachers are filling important gaps, but can he tell us the number of teachers that are actually filling gaps and are not simply addressing demographic issues? How many extra teachers are in the system above the demographic requirement?