Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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158. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the urgent steps being taken to ensure equality for school secretaries and caretakers; the details of her engagement to date with their trade union and with the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation in this regard; if the analysis of the survey undertaken by her Department to understand the current working patterns and the terms of work for school caretakers has completed; the results of same; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [39983/25]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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My Department recognises the vitally important role of secretaries and 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.

• 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.
• In relation to caretakers, 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.
• 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.
• The agreement which was given effect under Circular 0036/2022 did not grant public servant status to school secretaries and therefore this cohort do not have access to the Single Public Service Pension Scheme. The granting of such status is not a matter that this department can decide unilaterally, and proposals in this regard in terms of their impact on public finances and on wider potential impacts across the public sector will need to be considered in detail by this department and the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation.