Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

44. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason the current policy of his Department is for one secretary, one cleaner and one caretaker for schools with over 250 students, with no extra allocation for larger schools, despite the fact that there has been a 25% increase in secondary school student numbers under the remit of the Galway and Roscommon Education and Training Board; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10325/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

My Department’s focus in recent years has been to prioritise the filling of front-line teaching and Special Needs Assistant posts in schools.

These posts were not affected by the recruitment moratorium that was put in place in the public service in 2009 as part of budgetary measures.

However, secretary, caretaker and cleaning posts in schools were affected by the recruitment moratorium.  Alleviation arrangements were put in place to avoid a school of 250 pupils or more having less than one Secretary and one Caretaker post and a school of 450 pupils or more having less than one Cleaning post.

My Department acknowledges the need to improve these alleviation arrangements, particularly for the largest schools.  However, progress on this is dependent on additional budgetary funding and there are many competing priorities for available resources.

In the interim, there are a number of options available to ETBs to supplement their non-teaching staffing supports. As non-teaching staffing supports are allocated to the ETB scheme, it may look at the option of re-assigning staff between schools. The other option may be to explore the possibility of using the School Services Support Fund (SSSF) to supplement non-teaching staffing supports within the ETB. While the ETB would not be in a position to employ any person directly, it could use the SSSF to buy in a service (i.e. use a contracting company/agency) for the provision of additional secretarial, caretaker or cleaning services in a school. The level of SSSF funding provided by my Department to Galway and Roscommon ETB increased from €547,952 in 2013 to €688,581 in 2017.