Edward Timmins (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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149. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if her Department will pay primary-school caretakers' wages directly rather than wages being paid by schools themselves. [30172/25]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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My Department recognises the vitally important role of Caretakers within school communities, as a key link between students, school leaders and other staff, ensuring that both the core needs of the school are met. Without them, our schools would be unsustainable.

• Where a school employs a staff member to support those functions those staff are not public servants but employees of individual schools and responsibility for terms of employment rests with the school.
• Currently the majority of primary and voluntary secondary schools receive assistance to provide for caretaking services under grant schemes therefore caretakers, unlike secretaries are not paid directly by the Department.
• Since September 2023 my department has been providing a payroll service for former grant funded school secretaries. This happened on foot of an Agreement reached in 2022, under the auspices of the WRC, that secretaries would move to a centralised pay roll managed by the Department and receive new terms and conditions of employment. These included a pay scale aligned with that of Grade III/CO in ETBs, improved annual leave entitlements, improved maternity provisions and paid sick leave in excess of the statutory requirement.
• The Department is committed to ensuring that school caretakers will be afforded the opportunity to avail of a similar package offered to school secretaries in the near future. Once an agreement is reached a process of onboarding caretakers to payroll and adjustments to grant funding will be undertaken, similar to that implemented for secretaries.
• Work is ongoing to ensure that a robust business case, reflecting both the complexity of the caretaker role and the costs associated with the longer term development of allocation models for both secretaries and caretakers, can be presented to DPENDPR. The next step is to revert to DPENDR for sanction to begin talks with Fórsa on finalising an agreement on caretakers. This process is expected to take a number of months.