Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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443. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills to reintroduce the Gaeltacht teaching allowance for teachers and the allowance for teaching through Irish; whether it is unfair that some teachers receive the allowances while colleagues in the same schools do not; the amount of money saved since the Government abolished the allowances for new entrants, post-2012; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [3063/16]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Since the beginning of the financial crisis, there has been a need to enact a number of measures to reduce public expenditure. The previous Government reduced the salaries and allowances payable of all new entrants to public service recruitment grades (including teachers) by 10% with effect from 1 January 2011 and required that such new entrants would start on the first point of the applicable salary scale. Subsequently, following the public service-wide review of allowances and premium payments, the Government decided to withdraw or modify allowances for new beneficiary public servants with effect from 1 February 2012. Under this decision, certain allowances were withdrawn for new beneficiary teachers, including qualification allowances. However, the Government partially compensated for this by deciding that new entrant teachers would henceforth commence on a new salary scale which had a starting point higher than the starting point of the old scale.

These measures were implemented at time of very difficult financial and budgetary circumstances for the State.

The figures sought by the Deputy in relation to the Gaeltacht and Teaching through Irish allowances to teachers are currently being compiled by my Department and will be forwarded to the Deputy shortly.

Alleviation of the salary imbalance between those who entered the public service since 2011 and those who entered before that date began under the Haddington Road Agreement. Improved pay scales for post-1 January 2011 and post-1 February 2012 entrants to teaching were agreed and implemented under the terms of that Agreement. In addition, allowances payable to post-1 January 2011 entrants and such allowances as remain payable to post-1 February 2012 entrants were restored to pre-2011 levels.

The Lansdowne Road Agreement will, through salary increases and a reduction in the Pension-Related Deduction, begin the process of restoring the reductions to public service pay which were implemented over recent years. The issue of equalised pay scales was not one which could be resolved in the discussions which lead to the Agreement. However, the flat-rate increases contained in the Agreement will be proportionately more favourable to new entrants to teaching (who are lower on the pay scale) than to longer serving teachers. Circular letter 0066/2015 which issued in December 2015 sets out the revisions to the thresholds for the Pension Related Deduction from 2015 and revised salary scales for teachers which take effect from 1 January 2016.