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

It goes without saying that school secretaries and caretakers do great work. With all the circulars that the Minister's Department continues to fire at schools on a regular basis, secretaries actually have to take up a huge amount of schools' administrative burden. It is welcome that the Minister's Department will start talks. I would like to know the specifics. Are these talks in accordance with the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, recommendation of four years ago or are they just talks about talks? When will this inequality end? Things are unequal. The current crazy scenario is that education and training board, ETB, schools all have pensionable permanent secretaries and schools with other patron bodies do not. Many times in the last few years, plebiscites have been held among parents to decide which patron will take over a school. If an ETB takes over the patronage of a school the secretary will be permanent and pensionable. However, if patronage is taken over by Educate Together, the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association, CPMSA, or one of the bodies involved in the management of gaelscoileanna, the secretaries will not have permanent pensionable jobs. That is very unfair and wrong and it needs to end. I hope that these talks, for which we have been asking for some time, will be the start of it.

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