Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

It is the policy of my Department that schools should only employ people who are on the register of teachers maintained by the Teaching Council. An integral part of the registration process is an assessment of a person's qualifications. Unqualified personnel should not be appointed except in the most exceptional circumstances and then only when all avenues for recruiting qualified personnel have been exhausted. This should only be for quite limited time periods.

Earlier this year my Department directed schools that persons proposed for appointment to publicly-paid teaching posts must be registered with the Teaching Council and have qualifications appropriate to the sector and the post. Only where an employer can satisfactorily demonstrate that every reasonable effort has been made to recruit an appropriately qualified and registered teacher may an unqualified or unregistered person be recruited, pending the recruitment of an appropriately qualified and registered teacher.

In addition, a reminder recently issued to school authorities to prioritise qualified teachers, particularly newly or recently qualified teachers, when making substitute and other temporary appointments. That first call must be given to teachers who are not in work and I appreciate the efforts of those schools who have responded positively to date.

The Education (Amendment) Bill, currently before the House, contains an amendment to section 30 of the Teaching Council Act 2001. Section 30 in its current form prohibits people who are employed as teachers from being paid from public funds unless they are registered with the council. It is not possible to commence the section without the amendment proposed in the Bill, for two reasons. First, there is a legacy issue pertaining to a small number of people teaching in our schools who have acquired employment rights and have a certain permanency within the system. Amending the section will allow for regulations to be made to identify and ring-fence these people. This is also entirely consistent with the approach laid down in the original Teaching Council Act, which recognised the legitimacy of rights of people currently in schools not to be displaced.

Second, we need a practical solution to the situation where urgent and exceptional circumstances may necessitate the engagement of an unregistered person. The Bill will provide for the first time for regulations to limit the engagement of unregistered people and will require schools to prioritise the employment of registered teachers over unregistered people while still ensuring that schools can operate.

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