Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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222. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of full time teaching posts that were not filled in DEIS schools for the terms 2023/2024; 2024/2025; 2025/2026, respectively. [54171/25]

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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223. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of full time teaching posts that were vacant in DEIS schools for the terms 2023/2024 and 2024/2025. [54172/25]

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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224. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of days children in DEIS schools across the State did not have a full time teacher for a certain subject for the terms 2023/2024 and 2024/2025, respectively. [54173/25]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 222, 223 and 224 together.

Ensuring that every child's experience in school is positive and that they have qualified, engaged teachers available to support them in their learning is a priority area of action for the Government.

Like many sectors, recruitment challenges exist in the education sector. The number of teachers is at a record high, with over 79,000 currently employed. Teaching posts have grown by over 10,400 in the past five years, outpacing student growth.

The recruitment and appointment of teachers for teaching positions is managed by individual school authorities. There are over 3,000 individual primary school authorities, responsible for this process, including boards of management, as well as Education and Training Boards (ETBs).

The latest teacher payroll data, as of March 2025, shows there are 79,225 teachers employed in our schools across the country with 43,221 at primary level including special schools. The number of unfilled posts remain low at 2.5% as of March 2025. There are less than 1% resignations in the primary sector each year and 1.6% in post-primary.

The data available on unfilled allocated posts in DEIS schools indicates that in the school year 2023/24, there were a total of 542 unfilled teaching posts in DEIS schools, which would equate to 2.3% of all posts. The equivalent data for the school year 2024/25 indicated that there was a total of 627.6 unfilled allocated teaching posts in DEIS schools, representing 2.6% of all allocated posts in DEIS schools. Data for the 2025/26 school year is currently unavailable.

My Department cannot provide exact figures on the number of days children in DEIS schools across the State did not have a full-time teacher as the number of hours each student was taught by a teacher without a full-time contract is not recorded.

In circumstances where teaching posts are unfilled for a period of time, or where a vacancy arises in a school due to a teacher taking leave, such vacancies may be filled by substitute teachers, on either a casual or non-casual contract basis.

Substitutable leave absences may be filled by schools in several ways. A substitute teacher may be recruited locally by a school, and a claim for payment for the teacher may be submitted to my Department, via the Online Claims System. Alternatively, the absence may be covered by schools under a number of schemes, which are managed locally by schools, including the Supervision and Substitution Scheme.

To address teacher supply issues, my Department has implemented several measures that have led to:

• an increase of 20% in Initial Teacher Education graduates (student teachers) between 2018 and 2023, and
• a 30% increase in the number of teachers registered with the Teaching Council since 2017.