Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the important legislation before the House. Sinn Féin intends to work with the Minister of State and all Members of the House to improve it. This Bill stems from the current lack of regulation in the English language school sector, which is worth €1.58 billion per annum to the economy. The vast majority of the approximately 120 private English language schools in the State make a profit each year. Student fees range from €2,000 to €4,500 for six-month part-time courses. Our schools are so highly regarded that civil servants from other EU member states are being sent to Ireland to learn English here. The Department of Education and Skills is well aware of the potential growth of this sector, which it has identified as a key sector in its international education strategy. It is aiming for 25% growth in the sector over the next four years, potentially making it worth €2 billion by 2020. We welcome the Department's focus on this sector and the production of a Bill that attempts to regulate this industry. However, we are disappointed that at this early stage in proceedings, the Bill has a distinct lack of focus on regulating employment practices in this sector. This industry has lacked serious regulation for many years. Bad employment practices have practically become the norm. We need to reverse this trend. The Bill gives us an opportunity to do just that.

Approximately 1,200 teachers are employed in this sector all year round. This number doubles during the summer season. Unfortunately, this sector has largely been characterised by precarious employment and poor workers' rights. The Unite union, which has been active in this sector for many years, is well aware of serious abuses of workers' rights, such as the overuse and misuse of fixed-term contracts. Teachers are often released before Christmas and rehired in January so that the payment of holiday pay can be avoided. Zero-hour contracts are rife in this sector. Every one of the 40 teachers in one school is on a zero-hour contract. Bogus self-employment is a very worrying development in this sector. Teachers are being asked to provide schools with invoices for their services, rather than being paid a wage. There are vast disparities in pay. Non-native teachers are paid lower rates than native speakers. Teachers are not paid for non-contract hours, which means they are not paid for time spent preparing and correcting lessons. Unite has found that this means teachers in this sector are doing an average of eight hours of unpaid work each week. Teachers in this sector have no entitlement to sick pay.

This is the reality for workers in the English language school sector. The introduction of this Bill means that this is the time and the place to correct these wrongs. While we welcome many aspects of the Bill, we emphasise that it needs to go further. For example, section 27 proposes the establishment of a learner protection fund. We absolutely agree with the principle underpinning this fund and we welcome its introduction. In recent years, we have seen numerous rogue businesses coming to Ireland and taking money from students, before fleeing the country or going into insolvency, thereby leaving students high and dry.An example of such a scenario occurred last March, when a school in Limerick suddenly closed. Just to highlight the lack of regulation that currently exists in the sector, the owner of that school had actually bought it for just €100 the previous year. He had no idea how to run a business and, as such, had failed to put the school into insolvency before he left. The students were left without their money and without the service. If a similar scenario were to occur again, I imagine the learner protection fund would kick in and the students would be compensated. Sinn Féin, however, also wants the Bill to include a "staff protection fund". When these schools go bust or flee the country, they also leave the workers high and dry. In Limerick, when that school went bust, the teachers were left with one month's unpaid wages, which meant families could not pay their rent or put food on the table. We need to ensure that a safety net exists for workers as well as students.

Section 25 of the proposed legislation includes provision for an international education mark, IEM. This mark would regulate the ownership and management of these schools. Sinn Féin welcomes this proposal. We would, however, also like to see this section go further and introduce a fair employment mark, FEM. If the Department is serious about regulating this industry, it must also regulate workers' rights in the sector. A fair employment mark would ensure that employers adhere to basic employment standards for teachers and administration staff in the sector. Under the international education mark, if a school contravened health and safety regulations, the business would be sanctioned. We want the same sanctions to be handed out for the contravention of employment regulations. A fair employment mark could include provisions such as: a limit on the number of fixed-term contracts a school can issue at any one time; a requirement for employers to give a worker a legal, written statement of terms and conditions; a ban on zero-hour contracts; pay for non-contact hours; and equality of pay for non-native speakers. A worker should also have the right to be represented in his or her workplace by the union of his or her choice.

These are basic rights to which a worker in the sector should be entitled, and the Department must take responsibility for regulating adherence to them. It is not good enough for the Minister and this Bill to look the other way and leave it all up to the Workplace Relations Commission. Workers on three-month or six-month fixed-term contracts will not take cases to the WRC over any of these issues because if they do, they will not have their contracts renewed. If the Department is serious about regulating this sector, it also needs to get serious about protecting workers in the industry. The Department has the authority to introduce such a fair employment mark and to exclude bad employers from the IEM if they breach such basic conditions. We have an opportunity with this Bill to regulate the sector. Let us do it right away and do it the right way. We all want this sector to be a success, but it needs to work for its workers. We welcome the Bill and will support its passage through Second Stage, but it is vital that progress on workers' rights is made on Committee Stage.