Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I compliment my colleague, Deputy Thomas Byrne, on putting forward a comprehensive and practical motion. I hope that the Minister can give it favourable consideration. The motion is comprehensive. It deals with all aspects of the crisis facing second-level and primary schools in regard to teaching replacements.

From speaking to a principal and a deputy principal of a large second-level school in my constituency, I am aware that they regard the replacement of teachers who may be out sick or on career breaks as a crisis. One school told me that it advertised twice, last October and again at Christmas, for a career guidance teacher and it did not get a single applicant. It is the same regarding accounting and business - advertised at Christmas and no applicants. Action is needed. Schools indicate that much of their extracurricular activity will go by the wayside if there is not an improvement in the supply of teachers.

The slowness of the Teaching Council in registering students has been mentioned already. One proposal put to me is that the application for teacher registration should be put in process when a student is doing his or her postgraduate masters degree in education and that should be approved pending his or her final qualification. This would help to eliminate some of the delay.

The additional in-service hours required in respect of the reformed junior certificate cycle are increasing pressure on schools as well.

A number of years ago, one of the Minister's predecessors, Mr. Ruairí Quinn, brought in legislation in regard to minimising the amount of time that retired teachers could get back in the workplace and in the classroom and I was one of those who contributed. I advocated that under no circumstances should we be allowing those who had retired back in when there were qualified teachers available. At present, if a retired person goes back in, he or she goes back on the first point of entry of the scale. That is neither sensible nor attractive when these people are obliged to forgo their pension payments. Those retired teachers would have left the classroom on the maximum point of the scale.

I am told that teachers who are fully qualified but who are not registered with the Teaching Council can only be employed in a substitute capacity for four days in a row and then they must break that particular service and then may be employed again for four days. That is utterly ridiculous where their services are needed. These issues need to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

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