asked the Minister for Education if she will give details of the panel schemes used in the primary and secondary areas of education; and the transfer regulations which apply in the vocational sector.
Written Answers. - Panel Schemes and Transfer Regulations.
230.
The arrangements regarding diocesan and other approved panels are contained in Rule 97 of the Rules for National Schools. They provide that teachers who become redundant due to insufficiency of enrolments have the option of going onto the appropriate panel with a view to re-deployment. Panel teachers continue to teach in their schools until such time as they secure alternative posts. They are still subject to the rules other than those governing the continuance of their existing posts, they continue to be paid their full salary and any allowances due to them.
A panel teacher who is offered an alternative permanent post must accept it unless it is outside the specified distance. A teacher who refuses to accept a post which he or she should accept under the rules, will have his-her salary withdrawn as provided for in the rules.
The re-deployment scheme for lay teachers in Catholic secondary schools is the result of an agreement between the religious-clerical authorities of the Catholic secondary schools and the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland.
The agreement establishes agreed procedures by which lay teachers are redeployed to full-time teaching posts within mutually agreed deployment boundaries in the event of a closure of a secondary school or where the number of teachers who may be paid incremental salary is required to be reduced in accordance with the Rules for the Payment of Incremental Salary to Secondary Teachers. I am arranging for a copy of the scheme to be sent to the Deputy.
The position in the case of the vocational sector is that the teachers are appointed to the teaching staffs of vocational education committees and their assignment to vocational schools is a matter for each particular committee. Teachers may be transferred between schools under the aegis of the committee to which they were appointed in accordance with the needs of the committee's educational scheme.