Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein)
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61. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of teaching posts at primary level that were unfilled in the Dublin area, 2024/2025 school year; the number of teaching days where no teacher was appointed in the Dublin area, 2024/2025 school year; the number of these unfilled posts in the Dublin area that were in schools in the DEIS scheme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [50616/25]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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This Government is committed to ensuring that every child has a positive school experience, with access to qualified and engaged teachers who are dedicated to supporting their learning.

Like many sectors, recruitment challenges exist in the education sector, especially in urban areas. While most teaching positions are filled, some schools face significant recruitment challenges.

The recruitment and appointment of teachers for teaching positions is managed by individual school authorities. There are over 3,000 individual school authorities that manage recruitment independently of the Department.

While my Department does not collate data from individual schools on unused allocated posts or the number of teaching days where no teacher was appointed, the number of unused allocated teaching posts is available. The most recent analysis of the teacher payroll shows that, as of March 2025, there were 10,051.5 primary teaching allocated posts in County Dublin. Of these, 544.5 (5.4%) were unfilled. There were 3,854.5 allocated posts in DEIS schools which are included in the number of primary allocated posts above with 250.6 (6.5%) of these allocated posts unfilled.

Nationally the number of unfilled allocated primary teaching posts according to the March analysis was 1,228 (3.1%). This analysis has been taken at a point in time of the relevant data, and schools continually recruit throughout the year.

To support schools to address such issues, the Government has implemented several measures that have led to:

• An increase of 20% in initial teacher education graduates (student teachers)?between 2018 and 2023.
• A record number of registered teachers; the Teaching Council reported 94,928 teachers registered in the 2016/17 school year increasing to 122,743 teachers registered in 2023/24. Currently, the Teacher Council have reported that there are over 126,000 on the register representing a 33% increase in the number of teachers registered between 2017 and now.
• The highest number of teachers employed. Recent data showed there were over 79,000 qualified teachers employed in Ireland with over 43,000 at primary level including special schools.
• The rate of resignation and retirement is very low by any standard and is consistent with previous years.

• introducing the PME fee refund scheme,
• encouraging retired teachers to work as substitute teachers,
• facilitating those teachers on career break, or jobsharing to work as substitute teachers,
• developing, with the support of the Irish Primary Principals Network, educationposts.ie, a service to support schools’ recruitment efforts, and
• promoting the teaching profession through the Teaching Transforms campaign.