Paul Murphy
Question:110. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Minister for Education if she supports significantly increasing teachers' pay to address teacher shortages; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [52824/23]
View answerThursday, 30 November 2023
Questions (110)
Written answers
The Government is committed to the delivery of quality public services, and will continue to approach public service pay in a balanced way that is reasonable and fair to both public servants and the taxpayer. This has been achieved through series of national collective agreements applying across the public sector agreed between trade unions and the Government.
The value of public pay deals to the Government and the taxpayer is ensuring that pay costs are managed in a sustainable and orderly way and in a climate of industrial peace. By and large the public pay agreements have delivered on these objectives over the last 12 years. The current public service agreement, Building Momentum, is in place until the end of this year and talks are due to begin on a possible successor agreement.
The extension to Building Momentum provided for further increases of 6.5% to October 2023 (for a total of 8.5% to 9.5% over the entire agreement) for over 100,000 staff in the school sector as well as retired staff. In terms of teacher pay specifically, since October, a teacher on point 1 of the scale would earn a minimum of €41,390, an increase of more than €10,000 per annum since 2012. A teacher on the top point at least €77,000.
In addition, as part of the agreement there is a specific provision in relation to new entrant teacher pay which allows for the skipping of Point 12 of the pay scale. This incremental jump provides an addition €1,700 increase to new entrants. This follows on from measures introduced in the September 2018 agreement which provided for incremental jumps for new entrants at point 4 and 8. This is a further improvement in pay for new entrant teachers which means that teachers on the post-2011 pay scale will reach point 11 of the pay scale in a far shorter time than on the pre-2011 pay scales.
Building Momentum also provides for a sectoral bargaining process to deal with outstanding adjudications, commitments, recommendations, awards and claims which may include allowances. The post primary teaching unions have decided to use this fund to settle outstanding claims including some related to new entrants such as the incorporation of the value of the Professional Masters in Education allowance to the salaries of new entrant teachers. This is in addition to earlier measures incorporating the value of other qualification allowances in new entrant pay scales.
The Building Momentum Agreement states that parties agree that these measures will be implemented to resolve in full the remaining salary scale issues pertaining to new entrant teachers.
It is clear then that much has been done to increase the pay of teachers in recent years and any further changes will be considered as part of the development of a new collective agreement rather than for any individual sector.