Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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103. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if persons who have worked in the education sector and have availed of retirement under the terms of the Croke Park 1 deal are barred from returning in any way to public service or receiving payments for constituency work, training teachers, principals, deputy principals or school/college management in-service training or delivery of continual personal development of any kind. [19469/13]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I assume the Deputy is referring to public servants who retired before 29 February 2012 with their pensions calculated by reference to their salary prior to the introduction of the FEMPI (No. 2) Act 2009. No specific terms and conditions were applied to this group of retired public servants compared to other retired public servants.

My Department has introduced measures to minimise the recruitment of retired teachers in schools. Schools may only employ a retired teacher where no appropriately qualified unemployed registered teacher is available. Furthermore, retired teachers must start at the first point of the teachers salary scale and are treated as new entrants to teaching for pay purposes. Under the Employment Control Framework for the Higher Education Sector, retired staff who are re-engaged can only be paid a maximum of 20% of their pre-retirement salary, including any salary adjustments which may have occurred since their retirement. However, notwithstanding those provisions, there is no bar as such to retired public servants returning to public service employment.

The Centre of Excellence within Enterprise Ireland (EI) will be responsible for developing an improved environment for small and micro business and bringing this sector into the heart of national enterprise policy. It will build on the success of the County and City Enterprise Boards (CEBs) by developing new thinking and best practice with regard to supports for small and micro business and ensuring their delivery. Some of the strengths and advantages that EI will bring to the LEOs are an enhanced insight to the opportunities for development of key and emerging sectors, clusters and networks; a back-stop of technical expertise to assist in the assessment of potential investment projects and access to a central reservoir of information, benchmarking programme performance and assessing international best practice. The LEOs will be the first-stop-shop through which all information on State supports for small and micro businesses can be accessed, and where businesses with clear high growth potential can be fast-tracked to the next level of support from EI.

As Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation I will retain responsibility for policy, and a key feature of this new structure will be the consistent application of policy across all LEOs, from the evaluation of applications for funding support, to the spending of budgets allocated. I will shortly be publishing a Framework Service Level Agreement that has been agreed between Enterprise Ireland and the Local Authorities which will form the basis within which LEOs will operate in delivering enterprise supports. This includes details on the creation of the Evaluation Committees that will be established. They will include representatives from Enterprise Ireland and a number of business representatives and entrepreneurs with specific business expertise. The decision to have the County Manager, or their representative, chair the committee is in line with their responsibility in the delivery of this service on behalf of Enterprise Ireland.

In addition to the publication of the SLA the national micro enterprise policy guidelines are currently being reviewed and developed and will outline how micro and small enterprises will be supported. The Deputy will be aware that I engaged in a full public consultation process and the valuable inputs received are currently helping to frame these guidelines. The current policy of supporting companies with less than ten employees that are involved in manufacturing and internationally traded services will be broadened to a situation where all micro and small businesses will be included in the first-stop-shop services of the LEO e.g. companies with greater than ten employees and those trading in the domestic market will be eligible for appropriate supports.