Paudie Coffey (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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252. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if a school in a Gaeltacht area (details supplied) will be allowed to hire a teacher that is proficient in the Irish language pursuant to Section 6 of the Education Act 1998, as they are currently debarred from doing so as applicants on the supplementary panel are not proficient enough in the Irish language; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39635/13]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Teacher qualifications, including those relating to Irish, are designed to equip teachers to teach in all publicly funded schools. The detailed staffing and redeployment arrangements for all primary schools are set out in the Department's staffing circular 0013/2013 and associated FAQ documentation which is available on the Department's website. Flexible redeployment arrangements are required in order to ensure all surplus permanent teachers are redeployed to vacancies. The core function of the redeployment arrangements is to facilitate the redeployment of all surplus permanent teachers to other schools that have vacancies. The redeployment of all surplus permanent teachers is key to the Department's ability to manage within its payroll budget and ceiling on teacher numbers. Thereafter, schools are required under the panel arrangements to fill permanent vacancies from supplementary panels comprised of eligible fixed-term (temporary/substitute) and part-time teachers.