Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Thomas Byrne for raising this issue. I can fully understand the pursuit by the teachers’ unions of this particular issue. I sat down with the teachers’ unions through the teacher conciliation service and we negotiated, under the Lansdowne Road agreement, substantial increase for newly qualified teachers. It represented increases of 15% and 22% under that agreement, closing 75% of the gap in the scale. Indeed, at the higher points in the scales, the two scales have been merged.

From January next year, a newly qualified teacher straight out of college will be recruited at €35,600 a year. That is competitive for a newly qualified graduate. The issue of new entrants that the Deputy raised arises not just for education, although the largest numbers of recruits in those difficult years were in education. It raises issues right across the entire public service. In terms of dealing with this issue, it was on the table at the public pay talks but an agreement was negotiated, which did not include a settlement of that issue. The €900 million assigned in those pay talks were assigned on a more general basis.

However, it was agreed in the pay negotiations that the issues of new entrant pay and those areas in the public service with difficulty in recruiting will be discussed through process in the agreement. Money has not been set aside in the agreement at this point for either of these issues, nor has a deadline been set for the conclusion of such discussions. However, this remains an issue of concern for the trade unions and the Government side. A forum where the issues can be discussed in greater detail has been set out. This is an indication of openness on the part of the Government to consider these issues.

We have to make decisions in the context of scarce resources, however. The Deputy knows that in education we have been able to employ over 5,000 additional teachers between last September and this September, along with 2,000 special needs assistants, SNAs. Those investments need to be accommodated. One is always weighing on the one side, the legitimate expectation of public service employees for more pay against the need to invest in services, particularly after a decade when it was extremely difficult to do so. We have to balance those two levels of expectation from the public. The public service pay agreement provides a framework within which we can do that. It has been agreed by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.

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