Shane Curley (Fianna Fail)
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I know Ms Carty from home but generally everything I will say today is from my own experience as a teacher in a secondary school for ten years before I became a Senator. The big issue for me is that secretaries and caretakers are not recognised as public sector workers in the same sense as teachers and SNAs. This is the huge bugbear for me. Every day when I walk into school, if it is at half past seven in the morning to train a volleyball team, a hurling team or a camogie team, the first person I meet is either the secretary or the caretaker. They are there putting out chairs for whatever meeting might be going on in the gym or they are doing some genuinely vital work in the school. The school would not function without them. I fully see the merit in the arguments being made by Mr. Pike.

They are separate roles. For example, if a teacher is sick and cannot get to school, the first person he or she thinks of ringing is the school secretary. It is not the school principal or the year head but it is the secretary. School secretaries play a hugely vital role. I am not here today just to pay lip service. I genuinely do not believe a school could function without a secretary and a caretaker, at second level in particular.

There is a huge body of work to be done here. I accept that Fórsa is fully open to negotiation with the relevant stakeholders. All I can say is that I am fully supportive. I have spoken to Ms Carty already about this and we have had good engagement. I am fully supportive of what Fórsa is looking for because it is a genuine public service that is being carried out by school secretaries and school caretakers. I would not have functioned as a teacher without the caretaker being able to look after me at times when I needed him, or the secretary in other cases. In a lot of schools the secretary actually runs the school. They run the day-to-day business of a school. I do not know how a school would function without either. To take them away from a school and say they are not providing a public service would be incredulous in my view.

I fully support what Fórsa is looking for and I am here to help in any way I can. I am available to engage with the witnesses in any way I can in the future. They have my full support going forward. If there is anything I can do to lobby on their behalf to try to impact any kind of change, then I am here to help. Ms Carty has my number, so she will be keeping on top of me.