Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also extend good wishes to the Ceann Comhairle.

Like many in this House, I have had countless emails and calls from school principals, parents, students and teachers, all of whom are extremely concerned about the issue of substitution for teachers who are sick or self-isolating due to Covid.

It is important to say this is not a new or unexpected problem. Covid has exacerbated it, but it is still an issue. I raised this several times with the Minister for Education last year and she kept telling me about the supply panels. I will come back to that in a moment. The Irish National Teachers' Organisation, INTO, did a survey in November which showed the extent of this problem. In many ways, we were ahead of it in Sligo because a number of surveys were done in September and October in 32 schools, where there were 473 absences that required substitution. Some 22 schools, or 69%, had access to supply panels. The panel for those 22 schools supplied 15% of the substitutes. Some 27% of cases were covered either by special education teachers, principals or were simply not covered. Of the remaining ten schools that did not have access to supply panels, there was no substitute available 34% of the time. That is one in every three days. They were mainly the smaller schools that do not have flexibility within them to juggle teachers. Many comments were made by teachers and principals about this, but I do not have time to read them. Basically, they are saying that they make between 15 and 25 calls and they cannot get substitutes. This is a crisis. It is worse now than it was before.

Today, we hear the Minister is meeting representatives from the teacher education colleges, but this should have happened this time last year. This is bad management. I hate to say that, but it needs to be called out for what it is. When we are in a crisis we must take unprecedented actions. The Taoiseach has done this in other areas, so I do not know why it has not been done in education. Many fourth year students in teacher training colleges are already substituting, so one could ask where we look. Do we look to retired teachers, teachers on secondment or those in the inspectorate for a short period to get us over this hump? It is not ideal. Nothing is ideal in a pandemic and anybody who says it is, is not reasonable, but we expect proper planning to deal with this ongoing and escalating problem. I ask the Taoiseach what we are going to do.

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