Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat. Tá mé buíoch don Cheann Comhairle gur roghnaigh sé an t-ábhar seo. Late last year a number of payments to substitute teachers were stopped by the Department of Education and Skills's payroll section and that resulted in them being overtaxed on recent payments. It seems the Department of Education and Skills failed to register substitute teachers and some special needs assistants for a new PAYE system, meaning that they were treated as new employees and have had emergency tax deducted from their fortnightly payslip. The issue affects a number of teachers and has had a significant effect on their take-home pay. Some teachers have been taxed more than €500 for eight days work. Some substitute teachers who were not paid before Christmas for one week between 17 December and 21 December were not paid until last week. Many received no warning that they would be missing a whole week's pay prior to Christmas and that was deeply distressing for them.

When my office contacted the Department of Education and Skills about the issue before Christmas, we were assured that it would be addressed directly after Christmas and we were told that the fault lay not with the Department or the Revenue but with boards of management. One suggested option was to advise teachers to simply go to the board of management and to ask for a sub, as one would call it, on their wages.

This week, some teachers have been faced with a major tax bill and some got a double whammy. I was informed that the schools were at fault but it seems clear now that the Department is responsible, which was denied prior to Christmas. Could the Minister confirm that the cause of this issue has been identified? I accept that PAYE modernisation is complicated and the Department of Education and Skills is not the only organisation experiencing these issues. On the whole, however, people have not been affected by it and the question that arises is why this cohort is being so badly impacted. The teachers being impacted by the failures are some of the most vulnerable and they cannot afford to take the hit. The issue requires absolute priority.

The Minister addressed the issue of substitute teachers last weekend but I am not sure what he or the Department has done about it. There are too many vacancies and too much demand for substitute teachers in the system. We cannot get substitute teachers and that is a bigger problem.

The individual problems for these teachers are absolutely devastating. Many of them are substitute teachers because for some bizarre reason they cannot get permanent jobs at second level. At primary level we do not have enough teachers to fill the gaps and substitute teachers are brought in. For all the substitute teachers that have been devastated by this, there are many more gaps where positions have not been filled either permanently or by substitutes. One constituent of mine has been out of her primary teacher job because she is very seriously ill. She is going back before she is better because she feels so bad. A special needs teacher was taken out of special needs education within the school to cover her class. There is a huge feeling of guilt among teachers because this is necessitated by somebody's serious illness. Can the Minister outline exactly how the tax and pay situation came about for these substitute teachers? When can the teachers expect a repayment of the emergency tax that was taken from their pay last week? Is the Minister confident that these issues, which have plagued the system, have been resolved? If not, can he provide details of any further issues identified so that teachers will not be left in the lurch and will know what is happening? This has now happened in the Minister's Department. Similar issues with changes in IT and new systems happened in the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. A cohort of people out there are badly affected. Some feel this is a small cohort of people and it does not really matter. It matters a lot to them. It adds to the perception that teachers are not valued by the system. They are not valued by the bureaucracy which funds the education system. It is deeply damaging to teaching morale when teachers see these stories in the paper. Moreover, it is deeply damaging to the prospects of recruiting more teachers. Every time I get the opportunity I appeal to people to consider teaching as a profession, notwithstanding all these difficulties.

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