Brendan Kenneally
Ceist:76 Mr. Kenneally asked the Minister for Education whether there is inequity in relation to the payment of school secretaries who are job-sharing; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [3518/96]
Written Answers. - Job-Sharing School Secretaries.
I assume the Deputy is referring to the recently introduced scheme of job-sharing for secretaries in primary and secondary schools. The Deputy's claim that the scheme promotes inequity may be due to a misunderstanding of how this scheme operates.
Usually job-sharing schemes require two persons employed by the one employer to share one job. In the case of primary and secondary schools this is not possible because each secretary is employed separately by an individual school authority. Conventional job-sharing arrangements could not apply and a specially tailored scheme had to be devised.
I did have the option of limiting the scheme to secretaries who were able to find a job-sharing partner in a neighbouring school. This of course would also have required the agreement of both school authorities.
To do so would have made the scheme too restrictive. In fact it may have precluded secretaries who wished to avail of job-sharing from doing so. Therefore as an exceptional measure the scheme which I introduced allows a secretary to job-share without a partner. This, of course, means that the school where the job-sharing secretary works has the services of this person only on a half-time basis.
In order to enable schools to cover the partial loss of the secretary's services a grant is being provided to the schools concerned under the scheme of additional capitation grants for clerical services. The capitation grant scheme by its nature affords the school authority discretion to cover the absences of a job-sharing secretary as it wishes. This may give rise to an apparent inequity over payment depending on the particular local arrangement that is put in place.