Ms Luisa Carty:

The Department has a formula. We do not know what it is, but if anybody wants hours they have to apply through the Department. Regarding school secretaries, everyone who moved over, moved over on what they had. The schools are now applying for hours. The Department has a formula, as I said, but we do not know what it is. There are schools which cannot get the hours they need. The secretaries were being underpaid previously and the money that was going into the school previously was from the ancillary services grant. Schools were using that to put in the hours they thought they could afford at the time. Now, since the Department is paying, schools want more hours but they are not able to get them because we are told there is an allocation model in place. This is going on for over two years now. We still do not know what it is and schools are still scraping to get the hours to cover what they need, both for secretaries and caretakers. We do not know what the allocation is; only the Department knows.