John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)

Aspects of this Bill are necessary and welcome, particularly with regard to conditions for the registration and reregistration of teachers and for giving the Teaching Council the powers it needs to ensure the pre-service training is up to scratch. I am in favour of giving teachers the opportunity to update their skills and to embrace new technologies throughout their careers. I also welcome the Minister's commitment to support the co-ordinated delivery of services to families of children with special educational needs, given the cuts in the SNA resources and particularly in the reduction of the special needs assistance hours by the Government. I am glad to hear the provisions will not impact on the availability of speech therapy services for children with special educational needs which are provided through the HSE. I would welcome an undertaking from the Minister that the provision of services such as speech and language and occupational, vocational and behavioural therapies, will be made available to children in a timely manner.

The Bill provides for the employment of unqualified teachers in certain circumstances, such as to meet urgent staffing needs. I urge the Minister to put in place a provision that a school can only do so when it has exhausted all other possibilities. This is what teachers have said to me and I am sure they have made that point to the Minister. I appreciate this may be necessary in certain exceptional circumstances when it comes to requiring trained substitute teachers at short notice. However, with the large number of newly qualified and unemployed teachers, I have a problem in believing that this is necessary. I am informed approximately 1,600 people qualified as secondary teachers this year. A survey undertaken by the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, ASTI, showed that hundreds who graduated this year have emigrated or changed their careers because of the lack of job opportunities. Teachers will say that newly qualified teachers face a kind of catch-22 scenario in that they cannot secure full-time employment without experience and they cannot get experience unless they get a job, and I know the Minister has spoken on this. As he knows, because of that, many young teachers have emigrated in the hope of acquiring teaching work. I know many young teachers who have done that. Would the Minister consider establishing a database for unemployed qualified teachers and making it available to every school in the country? I do not believe there would be a big cost factor. It would be available to every principal who finds himself or herself in need of a short-term teacher. I have no doubt a young graduate would welcome any teaching opportunity he or she could be given, even a couple of days.

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