Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

No one can question the unique and valued position of the school secretary and our schools cannot function without them.

Our education system needs them. I doubt this will be disputed by anybody. Even by just sitting with a child who might have been called to the office to be given bad news or a child who is going home sick, secretaries perform a role that a teacher managing dozens of children in a classroom cannot perform.

The Department of Education and Skills has failed to seriously engage with school staff or the trade union to resolve this issue. The Department states that schools must pay their secretaries through the capitation grant, which is a farce. One cannot ask schools to juggle the cost of heating, lighting and paying staff. It leaves these workers in an unsustainable position of low pay, with no holiday or sick pay, no real job security and no access to the public service salary scale. This is not the school's fault. The fault lies squarely at the feet of the Government which is being penny wise and pound foolish. It has allowed these workers to fall through the cracks and is denying them fair pay and conditions while wasting hundreds of millions of euro through mismanagement of large capital projects. I am proud to stand with the school secretaries.

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