Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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90. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the qualifications needed to teach as a learning support teacher and the reasons for these particular qualifications. [1832/14]

Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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91. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if his attention has been drawn to the case of a person (details supplied) in County Donegal; and his plans to address this anomaly. [1833/14]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 90 and 91 together.

I wish to advise the Deputy that class teachers in schools are required to be fully-qualified with a qualification relevant to the sector in which they are teaching.

It has been the policy of my Department for some time that only qualified and registered teachers should be employed by schools. This is set out most recently in Circular Letters 31/2011 and 0025/2013. Current recruitment procedures direct schools to ensure that teachers proposed for appointment to publicly paid posts must be registered with the Teaching Council and have qualifications appropriate to the sector and suitable to the post for which they are proposed.

In respect of Learning Support (LS) and Resource Teaching (RT) positions in primary schools, Boards of Management are obliged to recruit and employ fully registered primary teachers. Any posts that comprise an element of General Allocation hours and Low Incidence hours are regarded as LS/RT posts and must be filled by fully registered primary school teachers.

Further guidance for schools on the organisation of Learning Support/Resource Teachers posts is provided in my Departments Circular SP ED 02/05: Organistaion of Teaching Resources for Pupils who need Additional Support in Mainstream Primary Schools.

It is a matter for school authorities to employ teachers in accordance with the Department's policy in this regard and the deployment of teaching staff in the school is in the first instance a matter for the school management authorities.