James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

There is always a degree of autonomy within the educational landscape, be it further or higher education. The Minister of State did correspond with the Department and the relevant bodies in terms of pay scales and around community training centres and youth reach centres, but the Department is not the employer. There is a remove. There can be several stages in that remove. It is not direct reporting lines. I would liken it to more of a dotted reporting line in some cases. These are all things that would benefit from clarity and some reorganisation or certainly some visibility of the different structures that pertain.

I am not going to comment much on the pay side because there are various Labour Court recommendations that are being worked through. They are being funded through my Department, but that is an ongoing piece of work. There have been some significant increases. For example, the CTC staff were awarded a 5% pay increase from recent Labour Court findings. That is progress.

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