Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Senator is opening a very large debate there, and I understand there is an informality here, but this is not a payment into a pension it is a pension-related deduction. Under the Act any public servant, including those who are not paying into a pension scheme, are captured by it. It has been tested repeatedly in the courts and I have very little flexibility in this without threatening the basis of the FEMPI itself. It is a complicated and long debate which I am happy to have on another occasion.

I will now turn to Senator Healy Eames's contribution on teachers. I have said previously that this is completely outside my level of responsibility. There is, however, a real issue to be tackled in the casualisation of the teaching profession at secondary school level. It suits some schools to have people in for a small number of hours and to have them captured in that cycle. I have tried to address this and I have discussed it with my colleague, the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan. I have tried to address this concern in other areas also by pushing strongly to replace agency nurses with full-time nurses, and that is what we have been running to do. Even in the Civil Service people are hired on short-term contracts. It is much better if there are full-time contracts for people and that is what I want to do. In the interim, casual, part-time teachers working fewer than 150 hours per school year are on an hourly rate of €38.78. That is a decent hourly rate.