Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

I thank the Senators who have contributed and for the broad support for the Bill. Some people were familiar with it in another time. As Senator Fidelma Healy Eames said, it is the first time this House has debated the Bill. It is a short Bill that embraces some fundamental points of education. As Senator Power said, the measures are largely technical and I will deal generally with the issues that arose, including deployment and qualified teachers.

Regarding deployment, the employment control framework is one of the concomitant consequences of the loss of economic sovereignty. We do not have control over the numbers employed in our public services. The memorandum of understanding and the negotiations with the troika oblige us to reduce expenditure on our current account, because we are spending €19 billion more on services than we are taking in taxes, which is twice the entire budget of the Department of Education and Skills. We must get there in two ways, one of which is by reducing public service numbers. The role of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and line Departments such as the Department of Education and Skills involves strict guidelines and control mechanisms. Specifically, where a teacher becomes supernumerary to a school for whatever reason and is on a panel, the person must be redeployed before we can hire a new student teacher who has qualified from the teacher training colleges. I can come back to this issue in detail on Committee Stage. Last year there was a large redeployment project. I was there for the latter part of it and it was handled exceptionally well. The concerns expressed by a number of people about being redeployed against their will or inappropriately allocated to different schools, did not materialise. We can get into the detail of that when we talk about it, when I will be better prepared to provide Senators with chapter and verse.

Senator Mullen expressed concerns about that area, which has history. There was a High Court case that did not proceed but we must have a certain degree of give and take. The ethos of the school is particularly important for all concerned but there are some aspects of the curriculum to which the schools, which receive public money, have signed up to. The teaching of geography is something that is not influenced by ethos, religious belief, other belief or sexual orientation. We must be selective in how we examine these measures in terms of the precise role of the teacher in a particular school.

Regarding section 30 and the Teaching Council, the most important element in this legislation enables section 30 to come into effect. This will enable the teaching profession to go fully professional in the same sense as lawyers, medical practitioners and architects. In order to practise as a teacher, lawyer, medic or architect, one must be registered in the profession and one must reregister on an annual basis. Senator Moran pointed out that previously there was merely an obligation to pay €90 and one was registered. There was no obligation to verify that one had maintained continual professional development and was in the process of renewal. We must all do this and in politics we call it an election but the professions do not necessarily see it in that way. The Teaching Council, the CPD requirements, the conditionality that now applies as a consequence of this legislation will enable teachers to do what many right-wing commentators say, which is that if there is a bad teacher, one cannot get rid of him or her. It is a frequent dinner party topic of conversation among people who have little or no contact with schools in recent times. Just like bad lawyers and bad doctors, the profession is probably the best to regulate its own affairs at this point in time. The Teaching Council currently has a majority of teachers, as the Medical Council at one stage had a majority of medical professionals. There will be an organic move towards a balance of professionals and lay people. This measure will enable the Teaching Council, which is dominated by teachers, to ensure it will exercise, with the knowledge of the system, the necessary disciplinary powers that are required to the point where a registered teacher would be deprived of the validity to practice as a teacher and not be able to teach in a State-funded school. If that sanction, after due process and natural law, is exercised it will send a signal, as it is intended to do, to every other person in the profession. That is to be welcomed. When we get into the detail of that we can look at how it has to be applied.

Senator Mary Moran welcomed the abolition of quangos, as she called them. Senator Ó Domhnaill referred to the EDC. It was stood down in 2005 when DEIS band 1 and band 2 were introduced. DEIS effectively replaced to various other well-intentioned but ad hoc schemes that did not have the same basis of scientific analysis and assessment as DEIS ones. There are anomalies in the allocation of resources to schools that need them.

The question of unqualified teachers being hired has vexed this debate and was to the fore in the teachers conferences I attended, particularly the INTO in Sligo last year. Unqualified teachers are not hired by aliens or people from Mars. They are hired by principals in schools, in many cases. One has to look at the way in which unqualified or retired teachers are hired. The entire profession, not just the Department of Education and Skills, including boards of management has to have regard to this issue.

There is a comfort factor in having somebody down the road whose abilities one knows, who can be called in easily to help and who knows the school and landscape. We would all gravitate towards that situation, which needs to be recognised and understood. It is not fair for people who are trying to work on probation. A Senator made the point that one cannot get a job if one does not have experience and if one does not have experience one is caught in a catch-22 situation. We have to break that.

There is now a requirement for schools to publish the identity of a substitute person and we can develop that. I made the point in my Second Stage opening remarks that if there is a choice to be made by the management of the school - frequently this involves small schools - between closing a school for a day and sending all the children home, perhaps to an empty house because both parents might be out working, something that was not the case 20 or 30 years ago, that is more irresponsible then keeping them with an unqualified or retired person. We are trying to move from the current situation to a point where, in certain circumstances, principals can, for a period of time specified in the legislation, take in somebody. They will have to account for that and we can examine how that is implemented.

Let us be very clear. The reason we have had to modify the application of section 30 of the Teaching Council legislation is precisely because of a very important piece that is unaltered in the legislation. Under the current legislation before the Bill is enacted, anybody who is hired by the State to teach in a school will not be paid if he or she is not qualified. Oireachtas moneys cannot be used to pay an unqualified teacher. I can confirm that on Committee Stage when we discuss the provision.

As the provision is so absolute there has to be an emergency clause. Some day a system will break down and special circumstances must be taken account of. A school should not be faced with a choice between sending children home or, as somebody suggested, bundling up children in different classrooms. There could be health and safety and all sorts of other problems.