Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Like the Minister, I welcome the opportunity for the House to discuss this issue. It is very important and I thank the Ceann Comhairle and the Business Committee for allowing us the time requested by Deputy Boyd Barrett. I have gone through the Minister's speech and I would like to raise some issues with him in that regard. The Minister says that the Department is not the employer of the staff concerned. I point out to the House that some school secretaries are employed directly by the Department. This means we have a two-tier system in employing school secretaries. Some have better pay and conditions and rights to pensions, sick pay, and the whole nine yards of workers' rights. Others have none of the above and far less pay. In one of the schools in my constituency I visited during the strike, there is a school secretary who earns €12,000 a year less than the secretary in the adjacent school. They do the same job and have been doing it for a similar number of years. One has been doing it for slightly longer than the other. It is outrageous that there are two tiers of pay for people who do the same job. This system is archaic and must be got rid of.

The survey the Department conducted has been closed for two weeks. The Department should, with some urgency, analyse the data and produce a report on it. The Minister said in his speech that the survey was issued to schools on 10 July and that this is standard practice. Most schools are closed by then. It was a very unusual to choose such a date to issue a survey to principals and vice principals and to expect them to carry out such paperwork in the middle of the holidays. Now that the Minister has the data, however, he needs to move on and analyse it very carefully.

I really take issue with the statement that the industrial action is considered unwarranted. Does the Minister really believe this is unwarranted after nearly 40 years of this two-tier system? I believe most school secretaries would say that the Minister's statement, or any indication from the Department that their action is unwarranted, is unwarranted. That statement needs to be withdrawn because it is totally unfair to the school secretaries. They have spent a lifetime working under a two-tier system. They have now taken action and are completely justified in doing so.

I have a few final things to say. The Minister said that it is standard practice in industrial relations to suspend action if it is agreed to refer a dispute to the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC. This is true, but it is standard practice for such a request to suspend action to come from the WRC rather than from the Minister or the Department. The Department has jumped the gun by insisting that the union withdraw the further industrial action it has planned. I believe the union has responded and said that it will not do so unless the request comes through the proper channel, the WRC, and unless the Minister gives a commitment, either publicly here today or very soon, to the union or the WRC that this issue will be addressed meaningfully, while keeping the school secretaries in mind, in order to end the two-tier system and that any new agreement will result in equality and equity. As the Minister stated, this agreement runs out in December 2019. A new agreement is needed, starting from January 2020, that will end the two-tier system of inequality. The Minister needs to address that. It is not helpful for him to urge the union to call off its planned industrial action.

These people's terms and conditions have been mentioned by many others, but it is worth going through them again. I might also throw into the mix the fact that more than 8,000 special needs assistants, SNAs, are working in even more precarious and probably worse situations than those of the secretaries. That group needs to be organised and represented properly to get its rights and stability addressed. One thing that happens, which was mentioned by other Deputies, is that during holidays this cohort of school secretaries has to sign on. Imagine the bureaucracy, paperwork, and toing and froing involved in that, without even mentioning the way in which it can mess up a person's tax over the course of the year and throw his or her PAYE affairs into disarray.

It must be remembered that we are dealing with a cohort who mainly come from working-class backgrounds, who are on low pay, who are rooted in their communities and who very much rely on the few bob they get through the capitation grant. Each time they have to sign on during a holiday period, it throws all their other entitlements into disarray. They have to play catch-up all the time.

It has been mentioned that the secretaries retire without an occupational pension. On the picket lines in Ballyfermot, the people I met were extraordinary. Teachers, parents, members of the community and special needs assistants were at the gates with the secretaries. On one picket line, I met a retired school secretary who retired after 30 odd years with no occupational pension. The woman who replaced her is facing the same future. That is really disgraceful.

When one asks the secretaries what a day in their lives is like, they say that they meet and greet parents and children in addition to dignitaries and other visitors. They look after queries from parents. When children arrive late, they bring them to their classrooms. They basically act as personal assistants to the principals and they write all the letters and do the filing. They do a lot for the Department, particularly since the introduction of the primary online data records. Every child has to have a unique number. This is about accounting for each child and preventing doubling up on the capitation grant from school to school. That is fair enough but all this work is now on top of everything else the school secretaries do. The bookwork has to be done by the 30 September. The secretaries do all the accounts for their schools. They organise wages for some of the staff. They do all the filing, order buses and check out the bills. They ring parents about children when there are problems or issues. On foot of the GDPR, there is a significant amount of paperwork, particularly when permission must be sought for children to attend football, boxing or dancing or to have their photographs taken. These multitaskers ought to be praised highly by society, by the Minister and by his Department. Praise and words alone will not be enough, however. The Minister needs to open up the negotiations in a meaningful way to end an inequitable system and make a commit today in this regard. He should stop putting pressure on the secretaries and their union to call off their action. Rather, he should use the industrial relations machinery in the proper way such that the WRC will have a commitment from the Department that he will address this issue in an equitable way that will end the two-tier system.

I understand that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has to play a role in this. Perhaps the Minister for Education and Skills could clarify in his response whether the official in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform who deals with this is out sick. There are many officials in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. Could we get over this hump and get somebody else to look after the matter without further delay? I am not saying the Minister for Education and Skills is necessarily responsible but having somebody out sick who passes the buck down the line is not an excuse for delay.

In order to move on and stop any more painful exchanges between the Minister, the Department, school secretaries and their union, it would be wonderful and really big of the Minister if he made a commitment to the school secretaries and Fórsa that he will engage with the unions in the proper manner and meaningfully to end the two-tier system and enter into an agreement, beginning on 1 January 2022, that will bring the workers' pay and conditions up to the standard they deserve.

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