Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

As Deputy Gannon has said, the people most impacted by the teacher shortages are children with special educational needs. These children have already been waiting for four years for assessments of need, speech and language therapy and occupational therapy and now the last plank they have to lean on - their support teachers - is being taken away or reduced. When permanent posts cannot be filled or a substitute teacher cannot be found, support teachers are filling the gap, meaning the most vulnerable children in the education system are the first to suffer because of staff shortages. They are not getting the additional support they need and their development and education suffers for it. You only get one childhood and these children are already playing catch-up.

When a teacher or a substitute teacher cannot be found, what happens in reality? That class of students is split into groups of three or four and they are given worksheets and landed into the back of other classrooms throughout the school. The best-case scenario for those children is that they are kept busy for the day but they learn nothing. The worst-case scenario is that a child with special education needs, such as a child who is neurodivergent, will struggle. Not only do they lose the usual support of their regular teacher but they also lose their familiar environment, their classmates and whatever special accommodations are made for them in their usual classroom. There is no point in the Taoiseach and other Ministers saying we will not allow that to happen; it is happening and it is happening now. Páiric Clerkin, CEO of the Irish Primary Principals Network, has stated:

We are at crisis point. The situation is critical in Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare.

The cost of living is so high that permanent substitute teacher posts cannot be filled. It used to be the case that teachers would come to the greater Dublin area from the country and manage. There was always a higher cost of living in the capital but it was manageable up to now. That is not the case anymore and people just cannot make that work. People, entirely fairly, would rather stay at home in rural counties and stick it out through the years on a panel and wait for a permanent position because one will come up eventually. In the meantime, they get much higher value from their pay than if they moved to Dublin, Kildare or Wicklow while they wait for a permanent post.

What is the Government's solution to make teaching in Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare attractive? It is to ban career breaks. This is diverting attention, which I agree with my colleague on, and it will not produce a solution. Career breaks have long been a feature which draw people into this profession. These are well-qualified and excellent professionals who are attracted to the flexibility that allows them to take time off to have a family, to do a degree or, unfortunately, in some cases to move abroad to save up for a deposit because it is impossible here with the price of rent. The Government is considering taking that away. In what world does that incentivise people to come back to teach? The solution to the staffing crisis is never to strip away the terms and conditions staff enjoy. The terms and conditions for teachers who are not on a permanent contract are already on the floor, and the Minister of State must know that. They are not paid over holiday periods and they are paid the bare minimum of sick pay, for example. It may have the opposite effect and it may well be the final straw that encourages people to leave the profession entirely. Because people are leaving the profession, retention is a huge issue. It is common to hear of principals leaving the profession, which I never heard of before. That would have been one of the sought-after positions but because the job has become increasingly impossible, principals are leaving.

We have to make teaching a more stable and attractive profession but we cannot blame teachers for the problem, which has basically been created by successive Governments. The shortage of teachers, nurses and other key staff is a symptom of a wider problem, namely the unaffordability and unavailability of housing, which is at the heart of so much of this. Unless that is rectified we will not get a solution to this that is sustainable into the future.

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