Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

While we are offering congratulations, I congratulate the Deputy on the birth of his second daughter, Sadhbh. I wish him and his partner, Nicola, well. As I said to him earlier, he is surrounded by women. He is blessed among women and it will be very good for him. I sincerely wish him well. It is wonderful to be welcoming a new baby girl.

The quality and commitment of Irish teachers is the bedrock of our education system and has been key to unlocking Ireland's potential as a knowledge economy. A range of measures are in place to ensure that teaching remains an attractive profession and that schools are supported in recruiting the staff they need. Pay and workplace reform measures for public servants have been governed by a framework of public service pay agreements for a number of years, with the new agreement in place until June 2026. The value of public pay deals to the Government and the taxpayer is in ensuring pay costs are managed in a sustainable and orderly way and in a climate of industrial peace. By and large, public pay agreements have delivered on these objectives over the past 12 years. The agreements have allowed a programme of pay restoration for public servants, with new-entrant pay being gradually restored over the years. The previous agreement, Building Momentum, provided for increases of 8.5% to 9.5% over the entire agreement, with workers on lower pay receiving higher percentage increases.

The new public sector pay agreement provides for further baseline increases of 9.25% for more than 100,000 staff in the school sector as well as retired staff. In terms of teacher pay specifically, these increases will raise the pay of a teacher on the top point to around €85,000 per annum. The starting pay for a teacher will be approximately €46,000 per annum, which is almost €20,000 higher than would have been achieved in 2011. In addition, there have been other recent measures under Building Momentum to increase pay and allow new-entrant teachers to move up the pay scale more quickly.

The Government is committed to the delivery of quality public services. We will continue to approach public service pay in a balanced way that is reasonable and fair to both public servants and taxpayers. The Government acknowledges that the housing issue and the current price pressures in society present particular challenges and are a source of concern for all public service workers, including staff in the education sector.

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