Jen Cummins (Dublin South Central, Social Democrats)

Community training centres, CTCs, provide an excellent education to young people in second chance education. There are 31 community training centres located around the country. Young people aged 16 to 21 who have left mainstream education before the leaving certificate can attend these centres, which provide a range of training and other supports to them, achieve QQI levels and progress to further education and employment.

I have the pleasure of being on the board of directors of one of these community training centres, Ballark community training centre in Santry. I have worked closely with this centre for several years. It started when I was the co-ordinator of Ballymun Anseo school completion programme, SCP, located very close to this centre. I have seen first-hand how these centres bring young people into a learning environment that is caring, practical and learner-centred. The staff are absolutely committed to the young people. When young people leave school early, their reintegration into education can be very complex and there needs to be patience, kindness, structure and acceptance. CTC staff are experts at this, but the CTCs are finding it challenging to recruit and keep staff as a result of the substandard salary scale they are on.

To put this into perspective, points 1 and 2 of the clerical scale available to staff in the CTCs are below the minimum wage. Managers of the community training centres earn approximately €10,000 less than the Youthreach and SCP co-ordinator salary scale, and yet they are supposed to be on the same scale. CTCs are funded by their local ETBs and have been since 2011. Prior to then, CTCs were funded by FÁS and the salary scales were linked to FÁS salary scales. When FÁS was dissolved, all the staff moved to the ETBs and were placed on public sector pay scales. They have, however, been left in limbo and - without consultation - this pay link was broken. In 2023, CTC staff were given a 5% increase, which was the first increase of its kind since 2006. It was accepted with the agreement that CTCs would be linked to the Youthreach pay scale, but this has not happened. CTCs are under the Youthreach umbrella in terms of training and education but not in terms of pay and conditions. Without this link to the public sector pay agreements, CTCs will have to continually try to argue with governments for just the crumbs they will get.

The work of the CTCs has become increasingly difficult since Covid. There has been a huge increase in the number of students attending CTCs with more complex needs than ever seen before. The Government needs to recognise and value the work being done in these centres and pay staff accordingly. The community training centres were made promises but these promises have not been kept and the staff are feeling undervalued and despondent. It is just not good enough. When the staff working with really vulnerable young people are themselves vulnerable in their pay and conditions - I have said this not only concerning workers in this sector but those in several other sectors in the education system too - they are not able to support young people who are coming back into second-chance education and do not feel valued as learners. The staff working in the CTCs are incredibly skilled at instilling confidence back into these young people so they can learn and get back on track. The cost of living in this country is extremely high and, therefore, people on wages poorer than those found in other agencies doing similar work are not on a par. This means community training centres are not attracting the staff they need so much. I urge the Minister of State to please consider what can be done to support these staff members in community training centres.

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