Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

I will try to assist in that regard. The intent of the changes being proposed under the new section 24(5) is to strengthen the legal basis for the redeployment of surplus teachers. In that respect, the Senator is correct. While having fully efficient and effective teacher redeployment arrangements has always been an objective of the Department, it has assumed, as I said in an earlier response to Senator Power, a critical dimension in the context of the EU-IMF framework. This is because of the ceiling on numbers under the employment control framework and the imperative of staying within the limit and, as I said, we also have obligations under the Croke Park agreement.

The allocation of teachers is a function of the pupil-teacher ratio and the population of schools both at primary and secondary level and, by definition, it varies every year because of a decrease in enrolment, an increase in demand or whatever. There could be an allocation of additional teachers and so on and there must be a basis for it. A different regime was in place in the past. If the allocation resulted in a surplus of teachers being in the vicinity, they were put on the deployment panel. I am being repetitious but the Senator is entitled to hear this in the context of this argument and the debate, for those who will read it, will make more sense. We are not in that space any more. In the old days there may have been a few teachers who for whatever reason be it ethos, the patron body or, as Senator Jim D'Arcy and others have said, they may have had a reputation, justified or otherwise, no prospective employer wanted to take on and they could not have been foisted upon them at that time so they stayed supernumerary and the Department absorbed that extra cost. We do not have that discretion any more. To encourage redeployment, with a carrot and stick approach effectively, and we cannot fire-----