Mr. Andy Pike:

I thank the Deputy. We have said many times that there is a lot of entrenched gender discrimination at the heart of how school secretaries have been treated for decades and decades. If they had been a well-organised group of male workers, this would have been resolved many years ago. The vast majority are low-paid, very part-time employees in schools. For them to unionise across the schools' sector, when there is only one of them in a school unlike a factory or a big local authority where there are hundreds, in the way they have demonstrates the level of anger and disenchantment that is out there. We had 700 members when we secured the pay agreement. We now have three or four times as many. It should have been resolved years ago. If they had been all male workers, maybe it would have been resolved. They may have been listened to. That is a bit of a problem sometimes.

On the strategy for negotiation, unfortunately last time we were in the WRC for weeks and weeks and we thought we had an agreement that might well cover pensions, we were strung along and on the last day in the last session, it was very clear the Department of public expenditure had ruled out any discussion of pensions. We had people then on chronically low pay. There was a real need to get some extra money into pay packets so we agreed terms of a pay agreement, but we said very clearly we would be back looking for pensions. At that time we were in a relatively weak position. We could only influence what would happen in 700 schools. This time, letters of notice about an indefinite strike happening on 28 August have gone out to 2,600 schools, so the footprint of what we do now will be a lot bigger. We hope that will be enough to persuade the civil servants running the Department of public expenditure they need to have another look at this. Their history is they only move when that kind of pressure is put on them. We are simply not prepared to go into talks in the WRC for weeks and weeks only for the Department of public expenditure to say Fórsa may have an agreement with the Department of education but as far as it is concerned we are still not getting pensions. We know that is what is going to happen unless this action takes place.