Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the Minister. It will probably not surprise her that I am going to start with the Cork Life Centre. I raised it with her in a Topical Issue debate last week and, along with Deputy Colm Burke, I asked her an oral parliamentary question on it yesterday. I did not catch all of Deputy Ó Laoghaire's contribution. When I started off my teaching journey in 2013 and 2014, I was a part-time teacher without a contract of indefinite duration, CID, without certainty and unable to get a mortgage from a bank or a car loan. While I appreciate this review process and implementation team are working away behind the scenes, all of these reviews take time, unfortunately. As Deputy Ó Laoghaire alluded to, every year spent on this review and on implementation is another year in which Don O'Leary and others in the Cork Life Centre may potentially lose a much-needed maths teacher. If we are honest about it, that teacher might get a better offer from a mainstream school, and that offer would include pension entitlements, increments and all of those other things qualified registered teachers are entitled to. I reiterate the urgency of this matter. I was talking to Mr. O'Leary earlier today and, whether we like it or not, the centre is likely to lose teachers to mainstream settings again next year. As Deputy Ó Laoghaire alluded to, this is a vocation for many in the centre. Many people are giving up the prospect of furthering their own careers because they believe in what the Cork Life Centre does, in its work and in Mr. O'Leary. There is a great atmosphere and team ethos, as the Minister will have experienced when she met those at the centre before the summer. I again stress the urgency involved. I hope this implementation report will be carried out expediently and as quickly as possible. I urge the Minister to ensure it is.

My second point relates to teacher shortages. I have a very specific ask. Last year, a number of steps were eventually taken to ensure schools could get substitute teachers. One such step made a considerable difference for second level schools in particular. This was allowing existing teachers who chose to do so to work in excess of their 22 contracted hours. That facility was probably the single most important step the Minister took last year to ensure cover in second level schools. Before this meeting, I was in contact with the principal of a school I used to work in to see what the lie of the land was within her school. Of a staff of 83 teachers, 27 were absent today with illness with nine of these cases relating to Covid. That is still a fairly significant number, representing more than 10% of staff. This principal spends two or three hours of each day begging people to come in to substitute that morning, the following day or at some other time during the week. These are hours she should be spending running a school, especially when the solution was there last year and is probably still within her staff room. Is the Minister looking into this? Will she reconsider reintroducing those steps, particularly for second level schools, including allowing teachers to work more than 22 hours?