Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The extra teachers are extremely welcome. I want to give an example from recent experience. I chair the board of management of a primary school. Due to career breaks and maternity leave, we have had quite a number of vacancies to fill. We spent a full day last July, another half day in August and another period two weeks ago interviewing, yet we still have a substitute maternity leave post that we cannot fill. We have had to resort to unqualified teachers. As the Minister knows, they can only work for five days at a time. This means that the class in question will be getting a different teacher every five days. I totally understand that we do not want unqualified individuals teaching in schools because it would have a disastrous effect on the quality of teaching. However, this is an exceptional circumstance and, no matter what the rule or regulation is, there has to be some space for particular circumstances that arise. We can certainly document our efforts to get somebody, which have been unsuccessful to date. I ask for the Minister to allow for some space to manoeuvre in these situations.

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