Ba mhaith lom inniu an cás a chur ar son ghrúpa áirithe de mhúinteoirí, daoine go bhfuil sé scannalach in a dtaobh, daoine atá ag cur suas le scéim agus le droch-choinníollacha nach mbaineann le haon dream eile de mhúinteoirí ná d'oibritheoirí in aon áit sa tír.
What I want to put on the record today is the case for a group of young Irish professionals, a group of the worst paid graduates in the public service, a group of the most exploited and hard doneby workers I know of. These are highly qualified, enthusiastic, superbly bright and innovative young teachers, without a doubt the cream of Europe's teaching talent, who are scraping for work and employment and paid, when they eventually get it, less than cleaners in the public service. I would like to put a few items clearly on the record about the people who operate in Irish primary schools on a substitute basis.
Every day in Irish primary schools there are approximately 600 to 700 substitute teachers needed. The people who are qualified to do this job are ordinary, qualified primary teachers. They are people who have gone through a process of selection following the leaving certificate, a series of interviews, a selection process by the Department of Education and the college authorities leading to places in a college of education followed by a three year intensive course of training and education and finally graduating with a BA degree which qualifies them to specifically teach in Irish primary schools. Because of the difficulties of employment prospects in primary schools certainly for three or four years now, most of these people are trying to scrape a living by doing substitute work in primary schools.
The first point I want to make about their position is that working a 184-day school year, which is the full school year, and being paid at the present substitute rate of £37.03 per day, their maximum gross take-home pay analysed over the year works out at £131 per week. This is the rate of pay were they to work every single day of the school year, every day available to them. However, I have never found the substitute who has done that except those who were lucky enough to cover in exceptional circumstances for somebody who was about to leave the service through disability. These people are scraping for a living.
What I want to explain to the House today are the atrocious difficulties they have in receiving the money to which they are entitled. The substitute teacher on being offered a position in a primary school, on finishing the period of teaching or after the end of a week, has a form completed in triplicate by the principal teacher in the school — step one. It is then forwarded to the chairperson of the board of management for signature — step two. This is then forwarded by him to the Department of Education — step three. It is then determined and calculated and the amount of payment decided on in the Department of Education — let us call it step four, or just administration. The cheque is then issued, not to the teacher but to the chairperson of the board — step five. The chairperson of the board, who will not have the substitute teacher's home address, will send it back to the principal of the school — step six. The principal of the school eventually sends the cheque to the teacher who has been waiting for it.
The scandal of this situation is that those young teachers, most of whom are living, as I said before, on beans and chips, trying to make ends meet waiting for a cheque, might wait anything from a fortnight to six months — and I know many of them who are waiting much longer than six months.
I want to put another point here clearly on the record in order to give the Department full credit due on this matter. In any of the delays I have found, and I have investigated quite a few of them, I have never found the delay to take place within the Department of Education. I want to make that point clear. I am not here having a knocking session at the Department of Education. The turnaround time from the arrival of the claim to the Department to the issue of the cheque is normally a very short period of time; it is certainly never more than a week and very often it is only two days. It is two, three, four or five days before it issues from the Department of Education.
The difficulty is, however, that when the cheque is issued from the Department of Education and it arrives to the parish priest, who is normally the chairperson of the board, the parish priest puts in on the mantelpiece, it sits there until such time as he is going down to the school. If he thinks to bring it with him, he brings it with him. If he happens to be forgetful or less than efficient, or on holidays in Majorca, or away for a couple of weeks, or on retreat, or a million other things that take up his life and time, then the substitute waits.
Every step along the way is a delay. I called out six or seven steps there. If everybody did everything immediately — in other words, to receive a letter today, to have it in the post by tomorrow afternoon — the quickest you could do those seven steps would be approximately 21 days. If everything worked absolutely efficiently, which it never does, the quickest that teacher will be paid is three weeks. The young teacher who begins, let us say in September, looking for work will be lucky in the first place to get work in the first week of September anyway and will be lucky to get paid before early October. In the meantime, who pays the rent, who buys the food, who makes ends meet?
There is a very simple resolution to most of this problem. The resolution of the first part is that the principal could sign the form and send it directly to the Department of Education, which would save the time involved in the form waiting with the chairperson of the board on the first occasion.
Let us allow that the principal can get the chairperson's signature quickly, and then send it to the Department of Education, what I have asked time and again of the Department of Education, what substitute teachers have asked time and again of the Department of Education, and what the INTO have been asking for years of the Department of Education is that when they finally calculate the amount, determine the cheque, sign the cheque, post the cheque, they should post it directly to the substitute teacher who is entitled to it.
It is a very small thing to ask. It is very little to ask that the cheque would be posted to the teacher. It seems extraordinary to be taking up the time of the House on such a simple matter. I just want to tell you where we are with it. A commitment was given by the Department of Education to the INTO last March that the computer programme in the Department would be modified in order to implement the direct issue of cheques to substitutes; but the Department at that time refused to say, "We will sign it and send it out to the substitutes". They refused to do that. Later, following the INTO Annual Congress, the matter was brought to the attention of the Department again by the INTO and again there was procrastination on the part of the Department and again they refused to agree to do that. It was raised directly with the Minister for Education by the President and General Secretary of the INTO. In October of this year the Minister gave a commitment to introduce direct payment and that it would be put in progress. Still the substitute teacher waits and waits.
I want the Minister to look at it now and to consider the point of view of the substitute teacher. This person, who is delighted with whatever bit of work he or she can get, feels a sense of being under a privilege or favour to the person who has asked them to the job. The substitute teachers ring me up and say: "I did work in that school a month ago"— or six weeks ago or two months ago —"and I have not got a cheque yet". The normal worker would say: "I will ring them up myself and see why they have not sent me out a cheque". But these people are afraid to do that because they are afraid that, if they start rocking the boat and putting pressure on, they will not be offered work again in the school, that they will get a reputation of being awkward.
So, we have a group of people who are being walked on, who are being exploited, who in what they are being paid are being paid as slave labour. If they work a full week over all the weeks of the year, annualise it out, multiply your 184 by £37.03 and divide it by 52 weeks you get a figure of £131. This is after a high quality leaving certificate, a very stiff entrance procedure to the college of education, a three-year course of training and graduation. These people at that point, if they are lucky to get work every day, are paid £7 a week less than a cleaner in the public service. They still cannot get their money. It is disgraceful. It is intolerable. I just hope the Minister will stand up here today and say: "Look, what we have decided to do in future at least is to take some of the pressure off these people and to issue these cheques directly".
I want to make one point here as a diversion. I am not raising and discussing the low pay except in order to paint the picture. That is being discussed in negotiations at the moment between the Department and the INTO. At least there are discussions and talks going on on that matter, but this specific issue I am talking about — the direct payment of substitute teachers — seems to be at a block at the moment, nothing is happening at the moment, no commitment is given in terms of time, when it might happen, how it might happen or where it is we are going on this issue.
So, we have the most exploited, underpaid and abused group of workers in the public service paid less than cleaners, living on beans and chips, crowded into the cheapest accommodation available around the city or any other part of the country, depending very often on handouts from their parents, with the slimmest prospects of employment. While we expect them to be creative, innovative, adaptable and caring, we still do not pay them their due on time. It is intolerable. It is quite clear it is something that will have to be addressed and it is quite clear that it cannot continue.
I would like at this stage to ask the Minister to respond in a very positive way on this issue. The problem is stated. I have described the substitute looking for work. Let us say it is a substitute from down the country who comes to Dublin, where most of the work of this kind is more available, who moves into a flat or other accommodation or, more often than not, tries to get a favour from a relative or a friend and, because they do not have the money to pay, crowds in on top of somebody. They are expected to do a professional job, they are waiting like spailpín fánaigh until somebody comes and offers them a job, and when they are given the job they go out and do it. They go out on the bus in the morning not knowing what classes they are going to have. They go in there, they take it on. They are a most professional group. They are thrown in at the deep end, they get on with the work, do it for as long as they are asked to and are thanked at the end of the day. Very often that is the last any of them ever know about it for a month or two months until they get a cheque — if they get a cheque.
I am trying to find out where the delay is. Is it still at the school? Has it gone from the school to the manager? Has it gone from the manager to the Department? Has it gone from the Department back to the manager? Has it gone from the manager back to the principal teacher? Has the principal teacher issued it? Has it been lost in the post? It is a disgrace that it should continue like this. No one could support it in any way. What I have said to people in talking about it is: could we at least make one small effort in order to take the destitution out of substitution as it is at the moment? It is a totally unacceptable exploitation of people.
I would like to offer a minute or two of my time to Senator O'Reilly if he wishes to add words to that. I know he gave some indication.
