Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I am genuinely concerned that this move by the unions to propose 12 days' unpaid leave for public servants is a financial exercise, a stroke of the pen that will work outside. It will work fine in theory but not in practice. I ask the House to consider the impact on children and on their classroom education which could be monumental. I disagree with my colleague, Senator O'Toole, on this issue. I am a teacher who qualified in the mid-1980s and who benefited from those three days' personal leave arrangements. Whenever one of us teachers needed to take personal leave, it meant mayhem for the other teachers because my 35 children had to be put in on top of other teachers' classes. With three days' personal leave, sick leave which is now not covered by substitution and now 12 days' leave on top, a teacher could genuinely be absent for up to 20 days a year.