Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I spoke to a teacher on Friday who told me that in the past six years she has lost approximately €30,000 of her salary, and she expects to lose over €107,000 of her salary over her full career. Equal pay for equal work is necessary now. That is a key component of the problem in the area.

A shortage of teachers is most keenly felt in the Irish medium and Gaeltacht schools, and it is reaching epic proportions. There is a fear that the Government is deliberately neglecting the problem so that the status of Irish will erode to the point that the Department will claim it had no choice but to rid the school system of mandatory Irish. We know that for a long time it has been an ambition of Fine Gael to do that. In the 2012 election, the then Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, proposed that Irish would no longer be a mandatory subject and only changed his view on that due to the public outcry at the time. It appears to many now that Fine Gael is deliberately neglecting provisions for the Irish language to the point where it becomes impossible to recruit teachers, and that will present a problem for compulsory Irish. This is not just my view. It is echoed by leading figures in the Irish language bodies. Muireann Ní Mhóráin of An Chomhairle um Oideachas Gaeltachta agus Gaelscolaíochta, COGG, has said that the future of Irish language education is in jeopardy if there is not a sufficient supply of fully qualified teachers.

We have heard of the major difficulties in recruiting teachers being experienced by mainstream schools. Approximately 90% of 2,800 schools surveyed stated they had problems recruiting teachers and substitute teachers, but that problem is far more serious in Gaeltacht schools and in Gaelscoileanna, with approximately 94% to 96% of those schools saying they have difficulties. All but two schools surveyed said that they could not get a substitute teacher with the necessary qualification in Irish. I spoke to someone in one school who told me they had a teacher who said "Tar anseo" to a pupil. The pupil went over to the teacher but the teacher said, "No, 'tar anseo' means go in the other direction'". That is the difficulty some of these Gaelscoileanna are having recruiting teachers with the necessary Irish.

What is the Department looking to do to fix this problem? Before Christmas, I put a question to the Department which told me it had no plans currently for the provision of Irish language education in Gaelscoileanna outside the Gaeltacht and it had no plans for one in the future. Currently, 23% of parents seek Gaelscoil education for their children. Only 5% of parents get that, and the Department has no plans to allow for a transition of English language schools into the Gaelscoil sector. That is compulsory English. The policy on the Gaeltacht education, thankfully, has arrived, about 50 years after it was called for by the cearta sibhialta na Gaeltachta group, but it will encounter huge obstacles in terms of progress due to the difficulties surrounding the recruitment of teachers.

There is apprehension on the part of schools about getting teachers to which they are entitled. In a scoil in Corca Dhuibhne, Scoil Naomh Eirc, parents are now paying for a teacher out of their own pockets. There is a need for a comprehensive plan for Irish medium education, both inside and outside the Gaeltacht, because they are all dependent on each other. I implore the Minister to focus on this aspect of supply as well because it is doing major damage to those families who simply seek the right to raise their children in Irish.

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