Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Social Democrats for tabling the motion. This is a massively important issue, one that has been playing on the minds of parents, teachers and students across the country for several years. I am a parent of four young children who are in school. Their school is excellent and does wonderful work in giving the children the skills they will need for the future. However, schools have been struggling significantly and consistently in recent years. Many principals are spending all their time trying to get teachers into the schools and, when they cannot do so, they are spending all their time splitting classes up and distributing them among the rest of the classes in the school.

The major difficulty here is that we have a generation of young children who have had the longest and most severe lockdown in Europe in terms of their access to education in schools. Now that they are back, they need extra help and support to catch up on what they have lost in the past two years but that help and support are not available. The results of this will manifest themselves in these children's futures. The lack of proper education in classes across the country currently means they will not reach their potential.

A survey carried out by the TUI found that 91% of secondary schools experienced problems in recruiting teachers in the past six months, while 61% of secondary schools had major problems in respect of retention. The survey found that 80% of school leaders are reporting problems finding staff more broadly.

Some 55% of principals reported they had significant vacancies in their own schools at the time of the survey, while more than 84% of principals said they experienced situations during the past school year where no teacher applied for advertised posts. We are in a massive crisis regarding this matter. It is absurd that the Government is talking about dealing with this crisis by potentially suspending career breaks for teachers because at the heart of this problem is the fact that the terms and conditions for teachers are not attractive enough at present to bring people into the sector. If the Government deletes one of the key elements of the terms and conditions for teachers, all it will do is make it less attractive for teachers to get involved in education in the future. The terms and conditions for teachers are made up of many different elements, including, obviously, salary and how far that salary goes in paying for the key necessities of life. I will speak to that in a couple of minutes. Those terms and conditions, however, also include the number of students in classes, investment in schools, the quality and conditions that exist in schools, and the pressures teachers are under in schools at present.

On the salaries that teachers are currently experiencing, it is an incredible situation that, in real terms, when considering expenditure by a young teacher, teachers' salaries have significantly reduced over the past ten years. A teacher working in the Dublin area at present will pay approximately €1,600 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. That adds up to more than €19,000 a year. Based on the current starting salary of a teacher, that leaves approximately €10,000 to pay for things such as tax, heating, food, transport and anything else a young, professional teacher might have to deal with on a year-to-year basis. The salary the Government is providing, taking account of the housing crisis that exists, is simply not attractive enough to get professionals into the sector. In addition, we are living in a global market so teachers are being employed elsewhere in the world. Their skills are highly valued and, with low employment rates, teachers can go into other sectors of the economy, work there and earn a good living.

The crisis the Government allowed to develop in the housing market over the past number of years, which is getting worse, is having the effect that young people cannot work in this sector, especially in large urban areas. If they are to work in such areas, in many cases, they either have to live at home or commute long distances. Asking teachers to commute two or three hours a day to work in urban areas is just not good enough. This crisis is of the Government's making. It has to be resolved through the Government focusing on the salaries and conditions of teachers and the cost of living they are experiencing. Unless it gets to grips with that, this situation will last into the future.

Teachers have been dealing with other elements of their terms and conditions. Many teachers were paid for responsibilities and posts previously. Due to the cuts after 2010, they were deleted and much of that has not been returned to teachers as of yet. There is also the differential caused by the two-tier pay delivered to teachers, especially young teachers entering the market, after 2010. That differential has left a big financial hole in the experience of many teachers in this country.

Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party are presiding over the corrosion of the education system in this country in a way that is having a material and negative effect on the outcomes of this generation of students in schools. That will manifest itself in a range of different issues, including mental health, reaching their full potential in the future, productivity, and incomes of those children. This Government needs to take this crisis seriously. It should not allow it to simply stagger on year after year but get to grips with it. Education is one of the most important services we provide as a State. If we consider the amount of money we are paying off in interest on the national debt, it is not that far off the total budget for the education system in this country. That is an incredible thing. The interest we are paying off on the national debt is not that far off the total budget for the education system in this country.

We have to take education seriously. This country prides itself and sells itself internationally on having a quality-educated generation but that will not last. There will be a major cost to the country, as well as individuals within society, unless the Government gets to grips with this issue. At present, the crisis in education is so bad that many teachers are finding it very difficult to stay in the profession. Is fadhb ollmhór é seo agus caithfidh an Rialtas glacadh leis go tapa.

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