Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)

I thank the Minister of State for his response. I got the same response, probably word for word, less than two hours ago in a reply to a parliamentary question. I cannot stress enough how much these issues need to be resolved. The last line in the response from the Minister for Education was:

For those reasons, any proposals must be considered in detail by my own officials and those in the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform as the granting or otherwise of public servant status is not within the scope of this Department.

I would love to know which Department's scope it is within. It affects so many people. Immediate steps need to be taken by this Government to ensure all school secretaries are recognised as public servants, which they truly are. The granting of access to a fair, secure public service pension is about equality and equality is not a privilege but a right. That has to be addressed. We will not have time to do it now but I would like to find out, perhaps through a parliamentary question, who or which Department is responsible for this. I ask the Government to look at this. Whatever Department is responsible, I ask that it act with fairness and give school secretaries the recognition and the retirement security they have more than earned. I gave the example of the difference between 40 years' service as an SNA or schoolteacher and 40 years' service as a secretary is that one leaves with a pension and the other gets a bunch of flowers and maybe a box of chocolates.

I respect the Minister of State’s response. Obviously, I am not happy with it and the people outside will probably not be happy with it, but we will certainly revisit this issue. We have had this issue for more than 45 years. We have recognition for SNAs and disability service workers, who are being discussed in the House this week. This is about giving recognition to those who are supplying that service. That is where governments have failed. It is why this country and our services have been failing. I thank the Minister of State for his response.

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