Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein)
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195. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated cost to provide one administration day a week to teaching principals across the primary school network. [38762/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Building on measures in previous budgets to enhance school leadership, Budget 2018 made €0.4 million available to fund almost 4600 additional release days for teaching principals in primary schools. This additional funding has provided an increase in the number of release days available to teaching principals in the 2018/19 school year to 17, 23 or 29 days depending on the size of the school.

I recently announced an extension to the arrangements for schools with teaching principals to cluster their release days into full-time posts, with one teacher covering the release days of all the schools in the cluster. Up to 50 principal release cluster posts will be put in place for the current school year. This measure will assist teaching principals to more effectively plan their release days for the benefit of the school.

Enabling teaching principals to have one release day per week would cost approximately €12 million per annum. Any additional increase in the number of release days will be considered as part of the next annual budgetary process alongside the many other demands from the education sector.

Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein)
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196. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated cost of lifting the moratorium on filling school management positions at primary school level, that is, assistant principal 1 and assistant principal 2 positions. [38763/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Budget 2017 allowed for the commencement of restoration of middle management posts as part of an agreed distributed leadership model and meant lifting the rigidity of the longstanding moratorium on these posts at primary and post-primary levels. This recognises the key role school leadership has in promoting a school environment which is welcoming, inclusive and accountable.

€2.75m was allocated in Budget 2017 to restore middle management positions i.e. the equivalent of approximately 1,300 middle management posts (Assistant Principal I and Assistant Principal II) at both Primary and Post-Primary (2,600 in total).

The lifting of the moratorium is an initial phase in the restoration of middle management posts and any future improvements to the number of posts allocated will be dependent on budgetary demands.

The estimated cost of lifting the moratorium on posts of responsibility and restoring them to pre-moratorium levels at primary level would be in the order of €19m.