Noel Rock (Dublin North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for taking the time to discuss this most important issue which not only affects primary schools within my constituency but across the State. We are facing a massive crisis at primary level, which needs to be addressed by the Government. Principals across the State and indeed in my constituency of Dublin North-West are facing huge difficulties in obtaining substitute teachers to cover sick days and maternity leave, and in filling permanent positions. This has resulted in pupils being crammed into other classrooms, or in the case of smaller schools closing for the day. In 2017, this is unacceptable. We are dealing with the future of our State and we cannot afford for pupils to be left behind in the education system due to a lack of substitute teachers to cover illness or maternity leave. I do not believe it is good enough for the Government to congratulate itself on budget 2018, having reduced the pupil-teacher ratio to 26:1 one week only for that ratio to become 26:0 the next week due to the lack of a substitute teacher or the lack of cover.

One of the issues we are facing on this issue is the number of young, newly qualified teachers being recruited for positions in the Middle East. We have seen this affect our health service with nurses taking up employment abroad and now we are facing this in our education services. When answering my parliamentary question on 24 October the Minister advised that his Department has no evidence of a recent or current shortage of primary teachers. The evidence is there to be seen in the data from the academic years 2010-2011 and 2014-2015 provided by the Teaching Council working group. The same group noted that substitute cover was required 915,000 days per year on average. However, teachers were employed by schools for an annual average of 590,000 days of substitute cover, which means that only 62% of substitutable absence was actually covered.

I am worried that this has resulted in special needs assistants, SNAs, being taken away from the most vulnerable pupils in an effort to cover these absences. Such testimony has been provided to me by a number of principals and teachers. This is completely unacceptable and something which will unquestionably worry the families of these students.

Another concern is the drastic affect this will have on DEIS schools, many of which are in my constituency. I have met with the Catholic Primary School Management Association, CPSMA, which believes it is these schools which will be affected the most by this shortage. There are also a number of DEIS schools in the Minister's constituency, and I am sure he does not want to see those schools or their students being at a further disadvantage when it comes to staffing issues. He is aware that the CPSMA conducted a survey of principals on this matter. The results are startling and the feedback from principals is extremely worrying. Some of the relevant feedback was as follows, and I quote:

I accidentally entered Galway instead of Dublin into the TextaSub service one day and I got about 15 responses. I spoke with many of them and offered them the position. They informed me the rent was too expensive in Dublin to sub here.

Another example is as follows:

For the last sick leave I rang 16 qualified teachers and sent out a TextaSub to 112 substitute teachers. Only one person responded to the text.

This appear to me to not only be a shortage, but a potential crisis in the making. Only 66% of substitutable days were covered. If we are to look ahead to Saturday in Copenhagen, were Martin O'Neill to have three injured players on the pitch but only be able to substitute in two players, people would have to ask about the managerial effectiveness at play there. It is perfectly reasonable to ask about the managerial effectiveness at play here if we can only substitute in two teachers for every three missing on a given day.

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