Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday the Government approved a number of measures relating to public service allowances for new beneficiaries. This follows a public service review of allowances and premium payments conducted by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. The main measure impacting teachers is the withdrawal of qualification allowances for new entrant teachers.

The Government has decided that the payment of allowances for the basic qualifications required for entry to the teaching profession is no longer appropriate or necessary. This allowance goes back many years to the time when a distinction was made between teaching colleges and university qualifications. It is not considered justifiable to incur a permanent cost to the public service pay and pensions bill where a public servant acquires an additional qualification. The payment of allowances, such as the Gaeltacht and island allowances, are being withdrawn or altered for all new beneficiaries in the public service, including new teachers. These allowances are no longer considered the most appropriate way to meet the business needs of public service employers or the service delivery needs of Irish language speakers. Other allowances were withdrawn because they were no longer considered appropriate or necessary, such as the allowance for principals who act as secretaries to the boards of management of their schools and the allowances for principals of certain community schools for management roles in sports complexes.

The view put forward by this Department, which was accepted by the Government, was that allowances held by serving staff are clearly part of pay and simply to withdraw them in the case of serving teachers would be a breach of the Croke Park agreement. Accordingly, the impact of the measures in so far as they apply to teachers will he confined to new entrants only.

The Government was mindful of the impact of the abolition of the qualifications allowance on new teachers given that the allowances have come to be viewed as an element of basic pay. We therefore sought to ensure broad consistency of impact across sectors. In this context, it has been agreed that new entrant teachers will no longer receive qualification allowances but will start on a salary of €30,702, which is equivalent to the fourth point of the existing scale. They will also have the option of being paid a pensionable allowance of €1,592 for supervision and substitution, thereby bringing their starting salary to €32,294.

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