Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I hope we will all get the extra time that Deputy Burton was given. The first line in the briefing we got on the Estimates for education, which is the topic in hand, states that the gross voted expenditure by the Department of Education and Skills for 2016 is in the order of €8.7 billion. If we compare that to the fact that €8.5 billion will be handed over by this State in interest payments on a debt that was not a debt of the making of the majority of ordinary people of this country, it puts things into perspective. Contrary to the former Tánaiste's fairytale speech about protecting education and so on, since 2011, some 11% has been cut from schools but, prior to that, the minute the bailout and the recession hit, schools were the first to pay the price. In Dublin West, which the former Tánaiste mentioned, 100 primary teachers were taken out of schools in Dublin 15 between 2009 and 2010. Some 300 special needs assistants were also taken out of schools. Parents took buses into the city centre and marched in protest at those cuts. The Minister might remember all of that. In 2014, in a memo to the former Minister, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, in the previous Government, civil servants had to warn the Government that any more cuts would force schools to close. This was not the Socialist Party but senior Department officials who warned that any further reduction, if it were necessary for budgetary measures, may create a risk that some schools would not be able to cover critical costs such as insurance, heat and light and that it would trigger school closures. In other words, it is completely unsustainable to leave schools reliant on voluntary payments, about which we have heard much lately, and bereft of so many of the teachers and the resources that were taken out of the system. It is now time to dramatically increase investment in education through, for example, taxation of wealth in this country.

The INTO points out that €1 per day is spent per pupil in this country. We have the worst funded second level system in the OECD. While we read in the document that there will be certain improvements, I argue that will be nothing near what is needed to restore what has been taken from schools during the past eight years. There have been substantial cuts since 2008 with some of the main ones including the loss of guidance counsellor provision, the taking of thousands of teachers out of the system, the moratorium on the post of responsibility which has meant that many jobs that used to done have not been done in schools and the fact that Traveller education was gutted.

I want to focus in my contribution on teachers. Payroll accounts for 80% of the expenditure in the Estimates, most of it being spent on teachers, some of it being spent on special needs assistants and some of it being spent on other jobs within schools. An interesting article on the ASTI website, entitled "Three colleagues, three pay scales", tells the story of three teachers teaching in the same school. There is about a year or two in the age difference among them and they are getting three different levels of pay. That is outrageous. When will this end? The three teachers concerned in Presentation College, Bray, are Michael Berigan who is 31 years of age, Yvonne Rossiter who is 27 years of age and Michael Browne who is also 27 years of age. They teach alongside each other and they graduated within a couple of years of each other. Michael Berigan is on the pre-2011 salary scale, Yvonne Rossiter is on the 2011 new entrant salary scale and Michael Browne is on the 2012 new entrant salary scale. The gap in earnings among them amounts to thousands of euro every year. I ask the Minister tonight when he will end that disgraceful inequality that was forced on many workers, teachers, nurses and other workers in the public service.

I have a story to relay from a woman who sent me an e-mail today as she knew this topic would be discussed. She is a primary school teacher living in my constituency. She highlights that she will earn €220,000 less over a 40-year career than her colleagues who graduated prior to 2011. This is very problematic for a number of reasons, and I do not need to tell the Minister those reasons. How is anyone like that woman ever meant to be able to buy a house, or to rent in the current situation where rents in her area have gone up by €341 per month since 2014? She points out how demoralising it is to work side by side with other teachers knowing how much more money they are earning compared to her and her lower paid counterparts. We will see another brain drain. There is no doubt that we will see people with those qualifications leaving this country. The previous Government let that happen with the nurses who left and it will happen again with teachers who will leave. They are leaving to go to Dubai and other countries where they will get proper pay and reward for the work they do.

I could spend more time speaking on this issue, but the reduced pay and the low hours are driving graduates away from teaching. The TUI president has spoken about this and it is now becoming a reality. The so-called partial restoration we saw in the legislation last year was nowhere near enough. We must have equal pay for equal work. I urge the teachers' unions to challenge this legally. Surely it cannot be right that two people doing the same work can be paid differently. The Minister is standing over this, but the effect of this on people's career earnings, their pensions and so on is incredible. When will the Minister turn his attention to that aspect? We now have a situation where teachers not only spend much of their time being part-time, but they then have the double whammy of the inferior payscale when they do get a permanent contract. The number of part-time teachers in Ireland is twice the OECD average. It is 30% in Ireland; one in three teachers are working part-time and do not have permanency. That must be addressed.

I also want to deal with the issue of class sizes. It is pointed out in the document that class sizes will improve by one point. At primary level, there will be one teacher for 27 pupils as opposed to 28 pupils. That is still atrocious. It goes nowhere near restoring what was done in the past few years. There will be 300 extra teachers at second level. There are approximately 750 second level schools in the country so each school can look forward to the addition of less than half a teacher each, as it were. Is this for real? We are meant to be in recovery but we still have the worst funded second level system. I do not think too many bottles of champagne will be cracked open in schools around the country when they hear these figures. The pupil numbers have risen at primary level by more than 10,000 in one year from 2013 to 2014, yet the number of teachers has not followed apace. When will that be remedied?

I did not mention the capital programme and I am surprised at how small a percentage it is of the overall expenditure.

If 93% is current expenditure, only €600 million is capital expenditure. This is in the context of the history and legacy we have in Ireland of prefabs and rundown schools. We heard wonderful tales from Deputy Burton about Dublin West but one of the biggest issues there is the fact that we still have massive schools with huge numbers of pupils. I mention St. Mochta's which has poor lighting, an aging building and 900 pupils, half of whom are taught in prefabs. Although it was promised before the election, when Deputies Burton and Varadkar were Ministers, and a host of schools appeared on election literature, will the money be there to build the projects on the schools building programme list last year? I cannot see it. There is no problem getting on a list. It is like getting on a hospital waiting list. However, that does not mean one actually gets the school building. It might have got the Deputies over a hump for the election but will we actually see blocks and bricks at all of the schools that were listed and in respect of which promises were made? I am very doubtful based on €600 million for capital expenditure.

See this speech in context