Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire as ucht teacht isteach chun an t-ábhar tábhachtach seo a phlé. Everybody is struggling today. That is no secret. This recession has hit everyone hard and deep. One legacy of good and bad times has been overcrowded classrooms. I have often lamented the day that we missed the opportunity to address this issue during the Celtic tiger era when governments dealt with budgetary surpluses of billions and billions of euro. I commend the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn, the Ministers of State at the Department of Education and Skills, Deputies Cannon and Sherlock, and the Department for maintaining class sizes during this difficult time when we have been forced to borrow between €10 billion and €20 billion every year.

I want to raise an issue about a school in West Cork, Castlehaven national school. In that school there are 39 students in the junior and senior infant classes. Several of those students have special learning needs and the teacher is also acting principal of a four-teacher school. That would be my idea of a horrendous, impossible job. To her credit, the teacher does it extremely well, as the parents of the pupils inform me.

It has been suggested to the school that JobBridge might be an option. When I examined the JobBridge scheme I realised that the board of management has informed the parents that it is not an option because of the opposition of the INTO which has instructed its members not to allow JobBridge workers into the school. JobBridge would solve the problem in Castlehaven. The board of management could pay €50 a week and take on a fully-trained graduate teacher who could in turn gain some valuable teaching experience. That teacher would also be able to complete the training which requires doing 30 or 40 weeks of the teaching diploma in the primary school classroom in order to receive the full qualification.

Unfortunately, many teachers who apply for jobs now are automatically thrown off the list because they do not have their teaching qualification for want of teaching experience. One school in my constituency recently received 138 applications for a maternity leave vacancy last month. Principals will of course eliminate anybody who is not qualified, or who does not have the teaching experience. I am aware of numerous principals and boards of management who would love to have people from JobBridge come into the school to assist where classrooms are overcrowded and so gain the experience that is deemed necessary.

I have raised the issue informally and have written formally to the INTO asking it to review its opposition to this issue. As a former member of the INTO, I understand how unions work, and can appreciate its position. Combined strength, however, is not always in the best interests of everybody. This is an example of how that combined strength works against some people's best interests. To oppose the JobBridge proposal is not in the best interests of the students who are in classrooms of over 30, as the INTO highlighted in a recent survey, nor is it in the interests of the hundreds of teachers who have graduated from colleges in Ireland over the past decade and who cannot get teaching positions or complete their formal qualification because they cannot get into the classroom. JobBridge offers a straightforward way to deal with that issue.

One could argue that the victims of this stance could portray opposition to the JobBridge scheme as an attitude of "I'm alright Jack, close the door after me". I do not think that is true in many cases but those who oppose it could stand accused of that attitude. I urge the Government to work pro-actively, to engage positively with the union and ask it, and particularly its executive, to show some leadership in dealing with this issue so that, at the very least, it would give a commitment to providing some derogation from doling out punishment to teachers who co-operate with the JobBridge scheme and who allow graduate teachers into their schools to gain experience. There are hundreds of teachers who are more than happy to do this. This scheme does not affect or give rise to displacement. There is no displacement whatsoever as a result of the JobBridge scheme.

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