Batt O'Keeffe (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)

I assure the Deputy that the Department of Education and Science is aware of the issues relating to the pay adjustments which are due to certain part-time teachers under the Protection of Employees (Part-Time Work) Act 2001. It has worked closely with school management bodies and teacher unions to ensure the legislation is implemented and applied to teachers fairly and consistently. The Department has made pay adjustments and paid arrears to the majority of part-time teachers, including substitute teachers, who are on the payrolls it directly administers. It has funded VECs to do likewise for part-time teachers on their payrolls. Part-time teachers who are employed on a part-time basis by individual boards of management of primary schools have yet to receive adjusted pay and arrears. There is a grant system in place to allow the boards to claim from the Department the funding required to pay such teachers. The boards of management pay part-time teachers directly. Such teachers are mainly employed by schools as resource teachers for special needs pupils, as language support assistants for newcomer pupils or under the modern languages primary schools initiative.

Under the Protection of Employees (Part-time Work) Act 2001, qualified eligible part-time teachers are entitled to be paid salaries appropriate to their qualifications and to receive incremental credits for their relevant teaching service. The Department decided to extend the single payroll process for all other teachers in primary, secondary and community and comprehensive schools, rather than persisting with the practice of having boards pay them directly, to ensure that the terms of the 2001 Act could be applied to part-time teachers who are paid directly by school boards. This approach ensures that teachers who have served part-time in more than one school can get full credit for their overall service. Software development is well advanced on the required extension to the payroll system.

It is not possible to assess the amount of money due to individual teachers, or in aggregate, because the Department holds no records on the teachers concerned. To calculate the correct salary details, the Department needs to obtain a complete service history for the teachers in question from each of the schools involved. This information will be added to the payroll database to make any salary adjustments needed when entitlements under the legislation are matched to the service history of the teachers. Under the implementation schedule, the collection of this service history data will begin when primary schools reopen in the autumn. All part-time teachers will be paid directly on the teachers' payroll from 2009. The system will have the capacity to pay arrears due on the basis of past service.

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