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

I understand the Deputy's concerns about a two-tiered salary system for the same occupation and activity, but it is not confined to the teaching sector or the public service. In response to the economic crisis, recruitment grades in the private sector have dropped considerably. One has the phenomenon of young or recently recruited people coming into a place of work to do a job at a rate that is lower than other people who have been in the job for three or four years prior to them. That is the way employers have reacted to the economic crisis. In view of pay agreements and pay contracts in the private and public sectors, unilaterally changing the contracts would be in breach of the agreements and would cause consequences that would disrupt the teaching. That is why we, along with many other employers, have altered the agreement for new recruits.

On Deputy Murphy’s concern that it will slow down, distort or reduce the number of quality teachers coming into the system; the feeling is that it will not for the simple reason that for every successful teaching applicant for both the primary school training centres - colleges of education – and at second level, there are approximately nine who are not successful. I speak about the present. Over time, that will have to be reviewed to see if there was any change in attitude but, currently we have a high level of applications for teaching posts both in the primary sector and the post-primary sector.

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