Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Question 80: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the position regarding the requirement for schools to recruit from teaching panels and if any special arrangements will be made for Gaelscoileanna to ensure teachers have the required standards of teaching the curriculum through Irish; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7040/11]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context

There are no additional qualification requirements required to teach in a Gaelscoil. The introduction of any such requirements would impact on the capacity to redeploy surplus permanent teachers to any primary school.

My Department will be seeking in the coming period to recommence discussions with the relevant education partners, on changes necessary to achieve our objective of absorbing all surplus teachers into vacancies that exist in other schools. The purpose of this measure is to ensure that all teachers with either permanent posts or contracts of indefinite duration are deployed in the most efficient and equitable manner within our education system.

Flexible redeployment arrangements are required in order to ensure all surplus permanent teachers are redeployed into vacancies. The country simply cannot afford to have surplus teachers in a school while permitting recruitment to take place in another school. The Deputy will agree that the Government is committed to ensuring the delivery of front-line services is protected as much as possible in our education system.

I am aware of the concerns that have been expressed by the Gaelscoil movement at this proposed redeployment. Over half of the Gaelscoileanna are under Catholic patronage and the redeployment of surplus teachers from these schools is through the relevant diocesan panels. Under the existing redeployment arrangements a Board of management has the right to interview, once there is more than one teacher on a panel.

My Department had discussions recently with An Foras Pátrúnachta in relation to its request for a separate panel for Gaelscoileanna under its patronage. These discussions are on-going and a key issue for my Department is how best to facilitate this request in a manner that avoids the inherent inefficiencies of a separate panel for a relatively small number of schools. Given our budgetary situation we need to have sufficient flexibility in the redeployment arrangements to ensure that surplus teachers in all schools regardless of patronage type can be readily redeployed to vacancies wherever they exist.

The existing arrangements for the redeployment of surplus teachers operate between schools of the same patronage and are not certain to bring about the redeployment of all surplus teachers. To address the current limitations, my Department will be seeking in the coming period to recommence discussions with the relevant education partners, including An Foras Pátrúnachta, on changes necessary to achieve our objective of absorbing all surplus teachers into vacancies that exist in other schools. These discussions can also deal with the request for a separate redeployment panel for Gaelscoileanna under the patronage of An Foras Pátrúnachta.