Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support the amendment. From my time being involved in the Teachers Union of Ireland, I know it was an issue that caused significant distress to teachers who were employed in professional posts for four or five hours a week. Since they only taught a specific subject they could be kept on that for years.

It always amazed me that employers, particularly education and training boards, would have five, six, seven or maybe more schools under their control, but would be unwilling to share, for example, a physics teacher across three or four schools in order to build up the full 22 hours. There was no excuse for it given that it was the same employer even though the teacher would have been teaching in different schools.

I recently came across a special needs assistant, SNA, working for an organisation that looks after disabled children. The SNA had 15 hours a week and a job came up for another seven hours a week. She was told she had to apply for it. She had already been employed by the company for a number of years. She applied, but did not get the extra seven hours. She asked her manager what went wrong. Her manager, who apparently was a fairly decent person, said, "Look the other person who applied is coming in on a lower rate of pay than the hourly rate we're paying you." The bottom line is that it was easier to give the additional part-time hours to the new person. The problem here was that this person was not a member of a trade union. Anyone working today needs to be represented by a trade union and needs to have good strong representation. A trade union would not allow something like that to happen easily.

In the education area, the Lansdowne Road agreement introduced what is covered under Senator Ruane's amendment. It has taken time in the education sector, but it is beginning to have an impact. We now find that employers cannot advertise hours if they have teachers already on short hours. From that point of view that is good.

It is also happening in the medical world. Strangely one of the worst employers for these breaches is the State. Unless those managers employed in State organisations step up to the plate and recognise the value of looking after workers well, this will continue. My advice, of course, is that every worker in the State or private sector should be a member of a trade union. We would not have these issues if they engaged with their trade union.

Certain institutes of technology, which will be technological universities in the not too distant future, still have lecturers who are not be on full hours for one reason or another. The same applies to secondary schools and education and training board centres. Part of the problem is that college and university degrees have become very specific which tends to limit or put people into a funnel from which there is no way out because the number of subjects they have available is quite small. When I started teaching in 1995, I got a full 22 hours on day one. By 1996 that had changed and by 2000 teachers were being offered five or ten hours a week, which is outrageous for people trying to take care of families.

I remember wanting to write to the Minister for Social Protection, looking for supplementary welfare for those on short hours, but because they were working one hour a day they did not qualify for it. The amendment is really worthwhile and I ask the Minister to accept it.