Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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479. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she has considered regrading school secretaries paid by her Department to take account of the fact that the staff ratio including SNAs has vastly grown since 1979 when the grading system was established, and with those numbers, that the responsibilities of school secretaries have also grown. [11444/22]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The process referred to by the Deputy is outlined in a letter to school management bodies on 12 August 1998. The issue was part of the agreement on the pay and conditions  of school secretaries, considered under Clause 2 (iii) of the Programme for Competitiveness and Work, and subsequent revisions of this agreement have been agreed through standard union engagement, most recently in 2020.  Additional amendments to this agreement can only be achieved through engagement and collective bargaining agreements between the Government and the public service unions.

For clarity, the rationale of linking grading to the calculation of the number of WTE teaching staff that a school is entitled to reflects the fact that this calculation relates strongly to the number of students enrolled in a school and other supports as outlined in the agreement. It is not the actual number of staff in the school which underpins the grading.