Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 16 May 2024
Public Accounts Committee
2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education
9:30 am
Ms Bernie McNally:
I will come in on that. The Deputy is right; that is a very live issue. He is right to welcome the work on the secretaries. That was a complex piece of work because I am afraid there are many legacy issues in our education system across the 4,000 schools, and many different arrangements for secretaries. It took us a while to get them on the payroll. They are on the payroll, however, and it is a great development. It is complicated, but that is live and we are working through that at the moment. Basically, schools that might be left with very little would have been getting a certain amount of ancillary money to cover secretaries. The schools told us how much and how many hours, etc., they were paying for the secretaries and we made calculations based on that. There are now some issues arising. Therefore-----