Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)

I had forgotten that there was a lunch break on Wednesday and I was in full flight before at the sos. I am sorry that the Minister, Deputy Coughlan, is not present. However, Deputy Haughey, an equally important Minister of State, is present so I can address my remarks to him.

In my speech, I paid tribute to the Minister, Deputy Coughlan, and repeated my contention, without wishing to be deemed sexist, that women make the best Ministers for Education. I am summarising what I said, as any good teacher would on coming back to class. There have been excellent women Ministers for Education from all the mainstream parties. I will not go into this again.

We spoke about the amalgamation of the VECs, which is a very good idea. I am very disappointed a cutback of only €3 million is all that will be realised. I wish the Minister luck with this. Everybody seems delighted – until his or her own VEC is swallowed up. At that point, they will have great stories to tell.

Section 12, which provides for the amendment of section 30 of the Teaching Council Act 2001 to allow for the employment in certain exceptional and limited circumstances of persons who are not registered teachers under the Act, is the reason I am speaking on the Bill. I spoke on this at our parliamentary party meeting last night. It is the daftest and least thought out measure I have ever seen in a Bill. We spend great amounts of money training teachers, including primary and secondary teachers. Although people pay for their education in many cases, the State contributes a huge amount. If ever there were unemployed teachers, there are now. I am sure that over the summer months many Deputies met very highly qualified young primary and secondary teachers, men and women, who teach a great range of subjects. Why is the Government making it legal to take on people who are not registered as teachers under the legislation? I do not understand this and cannot fathom why any Department in charge of teachers and which believes in teaching as a profession, as many in this House do, would want to have and legalise the position of teachers who are not registered.

I was a secondary school teacher and my next point does not concern my own career. Years ago there were teachers called JAMs, which stood for junior assistant-----

See this speech in context