Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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243. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he is aware that retired teachers of woodwork and building studies who qualified in 1980 and who worked in schools run by a vocational education committee are entitled to five years enhancement as per technical and specialist civil servants on their pensions, but teachers who qualified on the same course but who taught in community schools are not allowed the same added years; the legal basis for this distinction; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9350/16]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Public sector pension schemes by their nature have varying rules governing their administration. They are mainly statutory schemes, set up by or under Acts of the Oireachtas. Teachers in the Community School sector are members of The Secondary, Community and Comprehensive School Teachers Pension Scheme (S.I. No. 435 of 2009) while teachers in the Education and Training Boards are members of Education and Training Board Teachers Superannuation Scheme 2015 (S.I. No. 292 of 2015). Therefore the pension provision a teacher may be entitled to upon retirement depends not on the course they have undertaken but rather the rules of the pension scheme of which they are a member. In this regard the pension entitlements of teachers in community schools differs from Educational Training Boards because they have different pension schemes.

The Deputy is correct in stating there is no provision for the award of added years under the rules of Secondary, Community and Comprehensive School Teachers Pension Scheme. The added years' scheme referred to by the Deputy provides for the award of added years, on retirement, where the minimum age limit specified for appointment and/or the minimum qualifications and experience specified for appointment to a professional, technical or specialist post in an Education and Training Board would not allow a person to be appointed by age 25 and thereby acquire maximum reckonable service (40 years) by age 65. This was not seen as a requirement in the Voluntary and Community School Sector, where in general the issue did not arise.