Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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155. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills to explain the reason the Government has breached the terms of the Haddington Road agreement with the non-payment or delayed payment of incremental salary increases; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [3379/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The details of the Haddington Road Agreement for teachers are extremely complex and are outlined in my Department Circulars 5/2014 for post primary teachers and 32/2013 for primary teachers.

My Department operates the largest payroll in the State, with approximately 98,000 school employees and pensioners paid every fortnight. These payrolls have become increasingly complex over the past five years, due to the following:

- Introduction of three salary scales and two sets of allowances, by comparison to a single salary scale and set of allowances for all teachers, prior to 2010;

- Introduction of the Universal Social Charge (USC), Pension related Deduction (PRD) and the single pension scheme;

- Implementation of Section 30 of the Teaching Council Act 2001 and new sick leave regulations for schools employees etc.

In addition, the school employee payrolls have a high volume of substitute and casual appointments for payment, which is not a feature of other comparable payrolls for Civil Servants, Army, Garda Síochána etc. Work is ongoing at present to incorporate payments to home tutors through the payroll, which will broaden the range of payees coming within the remit of the school employee payrolls.

Accordingly, the development of the software to implement the Haddington Road Agreement (HRA) in the context of the overall numbers being paid on the payroll (including substitute and casual appointees), the payroll complexities referenced above and the complexity of the agreement itself has been a very difficult and complex task. A further complication is the fact that the software programme in addition to dealing with the deferred increments has to calculate/re calculate the salary reduction provisions of the HRA for those reaching €65,000 taking account of the impact of increments and allowances.

The development of the programmes together with the comprehensive testing necessary to ensure the correct application of the terms of the agreement has taken longer than projected to implement.

The majority of increments for teachers earning less than €65,000 including allowances became payable from the 1st December as teachers are generally appointed from 1 September. For the majority of those earning in excess of €65,000 increments will become payable from the 1st March.

The target dates for the payment of the deferred increments and arrears to primary teachers and special need assistants is the 12th February and to post primary teachers on the 19th February.