Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Between 2011 and 2017 applications for second level teaching have dropped by 62%. By any measure this is a dramatic reduction in the number of people who apply to go into second level teaching. The Minister can quote figures about increased recruitment, which is not hard given what happened during the austerity period and the slashing of public sector numbers, but the fact remains that we are having extraordinary difficulty in attracting people into teaching and nursing. Another group I have mentioned before as suffering this pay inequality is the service officers and ushers in Dáil Éireann who came in after 2012. They get less pay than those who came in before them, and with whom they work side by side. How can this attract people?

Consider the gap between the earnings, which is a second, lower tier of new entrants' earnings, and the costs of accommodation or being able to buy a house. This is the same generation, 25% of whom now believe they will never under any circumstances be able to afford a house. Consequently, some 60,000 mostly younger, educated people are leaving the State every year. They cannot live here.

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