Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 7 Dec 2022

Vol. 1030 No. 6

Teacher Shortages: Motion [Private Members]

Deputy Gary Gannon

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

notes that:

— a recent Teachers' Union of Ireland survey found 91 per cent of post-primary schools experienced teacher recruitment difficulties in the past six months, while 61 per cent experienced teacher retention difficulties;

— almost two-thirds of primary schools in the Dublin area are short-staffed, while Wicklow and Kildare face similar shortages;

— 62 per cent of posts on teacher supply panels in Dublin are vacant, with 10 per cent of posts outside Dublin also vacant;

— some special education teachers are being forced to plug gaps in primary school mainstream classrooms, with a recent survey by the Irish Primary Principals Network finding 83 per cent of schools, as a last resort, have had to redeploy special education teachers to mainstream classes to plug the gaps;

— in the House on 29th November, 2022, Taoiseach Micheál Martin stated that "As a basic principle, I think teachers and special needs resources should stay in special needs" and "resources should always be ring-fenced for special needs students";

— on Morning Ireland on 30th November, 2022, Minister of State at the Department of Education, Josepha Madigan TD said that she has always made it very clear in her capacity as Minister of State with responsibility for Special Education and Inclusion, that no special education teacher, or Special Needs Assistant, should be used other than the purpose for which they were assigned, and that if it is happening, it should not be happening;

— many post-primary schools are currently unable to offer a full range of subjects, with some employing personnel to teach subjects which they are unqualified to teach;

— the Department of Education predicted in 2021 the need for over 4,000 additional post-primary teachers within the next five years;

— the cost and availability of housing in Dublin and other urban centres around the country is preventing teachers from taking up posts, training and studying in these areas;

— the cost-of-living crisis is further exacerbating the housing crisis; and

— Ireland's teaching workforce is not representative of the wider Irish society, with people from working class and minority backgrounds taking up few teaching posts across the country;

agrees that:

— the Professional Master of Education (PME) is not financially viable for many who wish to become a teacher;

— it is not financially viable for many teachers to take up posts in Dublin and other urban centres due to the cost and availability of housing;

— where special education teachers are rostered to work in primary school mainstream classrooms, those with special educational needs are being neglected and denied their constitutional and statutory right to an education appropriate to meet their needs;

— employing personnel to teach subjects which they are unqualified to teach is an inadequate solution to teacher shortages and is detrimental to students' education; and

— the recruitment of teachers from working class and minority backgrounds is rare; and

calls for:

— the immediate establishment of an emergency teacher supply taskforce to identify tangible solutions to the shortages, informed by stakeholders;

— the Minister for Education to work with Higher Education Institutions to facilitate 3rd and 4th year student teachers, and master's students, to engage in increased substitution work;

— eliminate delays surrounding the re-registration of teachers with the Teaching Council;

— teachers in training to be paid for their work in placement schools;

— a review of the PME, which was increased from one year to two years in 2014, with significant additional costs associated with the increased duration of the course;

— permanent whole-time jobs to be given to teachers upon initial appointment;

— substantial union representation on the Department of Education's Teacher Supply Steering Group;

— the creation of funded scholarships to be awarded to excellent candidates and candidates from minority backgrounds pursuing primary school teaching and qualifications;

— the immediate introduction of a punitive 10 per cent tax on vacant homes;

— enforcement of short-term letting platforms like Airbnb so that short-term lets return to the long-term rental market; and

— the immediate acceleration and expansion of affordable purchase and Cost Rental housing schemes.

My contribution will focus on the crisis as it exists in our schools, that is, the teacher shortage and retention crisis. I intend to return to some of the issues that have been raised in the media, particularly in relation to the change in the narrative of a teacher shortage crisis to a focus, purposely I believe, on career breaks, which are now being discussed. I believe that was a tactic on the part of the Department and I will challenge it in my contribution.

This teacher recruitment and retention crisis in our schools did not happen overnight. It has been more than a decade in the making and it is the result of flawed policy decisions by successive Governments. Even before the pandemic and the cost-of-living squeeze that followed, the seeds were already sown for the serious staff shortages we are now seeing in our schools. The introduction of a lower salary scale for new entrants to the profession in 2010 probably marked the start of the decline. The situation was worsened a few years later when it became more difficult and exorbitantly expensive to qualify as a teacher.

Our schools are paying a high price for these short-sighted decisions. The figures are grim. A recent Teachers Union of Ireland, TUI, survey found that 91% of post-primary schools experienced recruitment difficulties in the past six months, while 61% reported problems with teacher retention. Almost two thirds of primary schools in Dublin are short-staffed, with Wicklow and Kildare facing similar issues. There are slim pickings for schools that turn to teacher supply panels to deal with staff absences, with 62% of posts vacant in Dublin and 10% vacant outside the capital. This is putting principals under severe pressure and impacting the ability of schools to meet the day-to-day educational needs of their students. It is an outrage that children with additional needs are losing valuable tuition hours because of the recruitment crisis. We are failing those who most need our support.

A recent survey by the Irish Primary Principals' Network, IPPN, found that 83% of schools have had no option but to redeploy special education teachers to plug the gaps in mainstream classes. The Minister for Education, Deputy Norma Foley, recently ruled out the reintroduction of the banked hours system that operated during Covid for pupils with special needs. This would result in the restoration of any lost tuition time later in the school year. Banked hours should only be used as a last resort, but they should be reinstated as a minimum stopgap measure. Children with additional needs must be shielded from the teacher recruitment crisis so they can reach their full potential within our education system. They are the ones most at risk of regressing, both socially and academically, if they lose vital in-class learning supports.

Given the reality in our schools, it is the height of hypocrisy for the Government to state that special education teachers should not be used as substitutes in mainstream classes. Senior Ministers are so out of touch that they deny this is even an issue. I refer to an interview the Minister of State did recently with RTÉ, in which she stated: "I’ve always made it very clear in my capacity as Minister for special education that no special education teacher, or SNA, should be used other than the purpose for which they were assigned." Let me tell the Minister of State that this is exactly what is happening in 83% of our schools, according to a recent survey. The fact that the Minister of State with special responsibility for this area does not even recognise the existence of this crisis is a serious concern to me and the families who have contacted our offices.

Recruitment issues are leading to greater inequalities in our education system. One grind school has reported a 100% increase in demand for its courses across a range of subjects, which it attributes to teacher shortages. This has created a situation where students from wealthier backgrounds will have an academic advantage when it comes to State examinations and higher education options. While this has forever been the case, it is certainly being exacerbated under this Government. Some schools have had to drop subjects from the curriculum due to the lack of qualified teachers, while many substitutes are merely taking up supervisory roles in the classrooms. This will potentially affect students’ future careers and college choices.

This week, a principal in Dublin was forced to appeal for substitute teachers on social media, warning that schools were at breaking point due to staff shortages. Taking to Twitter to appeal for teachers - that is what we have in this country. I have heard first-hand testimonies from principals about the devastating impact this crisis is having on their schools.

As a starting point, the Social Democrats are seeking the establishment of an emergency teacher supply task force, with the involvement of all stakeholders - teachers, principals and trade unions. It is vital that teachers, school principals and union representatives have their voices heard as part of any proposed solutions. We are asking the Minister to work with higher education institutes to increase the numbers of third- and fourth-year student teachers and master’s students engaging in substitution work. We also believe that teachers in training should be paid for their work in placement schools.

Barriers to taking up a career in teaching, including financial and academic ones, must be removed if we are to incentivise people to take up teaching. We have proposed a review of the professional master of education, PME, which was increased from one to two years in 2014, with the longer duration leading to significant additional costs. A recent study found that more than 40% of students participating in the PME are reliant on parents or partners for funding. This puts huge pressure on family finances and can cause high levels of financial stress. Since the PME was expanded, it now costs €12,500 to complete the two-year course. This compares with €5,000 for the one-year master’s course just up the road in Belfast.

A lack of affordable accommodation, particularly in Dublin where monthly rents now average almost €2,300 a month, has been identified as a major disincentive to teachers taking up temporary posts. The underlying causes of the housing crisis must be addressed in tandem with measures to increase the supply of qualified teachers. Steps to increase housing supply will be key. My colleague, Deputy Cian O’Callaghan, will speak to these shortly. Increasing supply can be achieved by regulating short-term letting platforms, such as Airbnb, thereby potentially returning properties to the long-term rental market. A punitive 10% tax on vacant homes would also increase supply, along with the acceleration of affordable purchase and cost-rental housing schemes. It is completely unreasonable to ask a teacher to move to a new location if he or she does not have a job or financial security.

The motion calls for permanent, full-time positions to be given to teachers upon their initial appointment and for the elimination of the outrageously long delays for those re-registering with the Teaching Council.

Ireland’s teaching workforce is not representative of wider Irish society, with people from working class and minority backgrounds taking up few posts across the country. To this end, we are calling for the introduction of funded scholarships for excellent candidates from minority backgrounds to allow them to pursue primary school teaching qualifications.

There are no quick-fix solutions to the teacher recruitment crisis. It will require systemic change and leadership, which has been lacking to date from this Government and the two preceding Governments.

Before my colleagues address some of the specifics of this crisis, I remind the Minister and the Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, that this system is broken and verging on collapse. The list of actions they have often reeled off as solutions for the media are ineffective. We have been watching our schools slide deeper into turmoil under their watch. These issues must be tackled as a matter of urgency. We have no time to waste.

Urgency was the reason we tabled this motion. It is no coincidence that many of the proposals in the motion, which we submitted last week, are now being taken up according to media reports, for example, in respect of short-term lets.

Yesterday's announcement that career breaks are to be taken off the agenda was like a sledgehammer for the teaching profession. Let us be very clear. We are asking for solutions to address the problems as they exist today. There are 2,000 teachers on career breaks. This proposal will not bring them back into the profession or get teacher into classrooms to alleviate the crisis being experienced. What it has done, very conveniently for this Government, is change the narrative. It is no longer about the Government’s failure or the fact that the cost-of-living and cost-of-housing crises, which have been expedited under this Government, are the reason this is happening.

It was a cruel and targeted measure and one that will increase the absence of morale among the teaching profession.

There were solutions to this crisis. We could look at the prohibitive cost of €12,500 for a person taking on a master's degree. All of these were solutions that could have been implemented but instead this Department has gone to the lowest hanging fruit and done what it has always done, which is to attack the teachers rather than to work with them. What will we do to incentivise people into the profession? What will we do to encourage people to come back? I know people who went into teaching as a vocation and a passion but they simply cannot afford to live in our cities. That is at the root of this crisis and it is at the root of the failure of this Government, the one before that and the one before that. It is not about career breaks but about the Government's failure.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

As Deputy Gannon has said, the people most impacted by the teacher shortages are children with special educational needs. These children have already been waiting for four years for assessments of need, speech and language therapy and occupational therapy and now the last plank they have to lean on - their support teachers - is being taken away or reduced. When permanent posts cannot be filled or a substitute teacher cannot be found, support teachers are filling the gap, meaning the most vulnerable children in the education system are the first to suffer because of staff shortages. They are not getting the additional support they need and their development and education suffers for it. You only get one childhood and these children are already playing catch-up.

When a teacher or a substitute teacher cannot be found, what happens in reality? That class of students is split into groups of three or four and they are given worksheets and landed into the back of other classrooms throughout the school. The best-case scenario for those children is that they are kept busy for the day but they learn nothing. The worst-case scenario is that a child with special education needs, such as a child who is neurodivergent, will struggle. Not only do they lose the usual support of their regular teacher but they also lose their familiar environment, their classmates and whatever special accommodations are made for them in their usual classroom. There is no point in the Taoiseach and other Ministers saying we will not allow that to happen; it is happening and it is happening now. Páiric Clerkin, CEO of the Irish Primary Principals Network, has stated:

We are at crisis point. The situation is critical in Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare.

The cost of living is so high that permanent substitute teacher posts cannot be filled. It used to be the case that teachers would come to the greater Dublin area from the country and manage. There was always a higher cost of living in the capital but it was manageable up to now. That is not the case anymore and people just cannot make that work. People, entirely fairly, would rather stay at home in rural counties and stick it out through the years on a panel and wait for a permanent position because one will come up eventually. In the meantime, they get much higher value from their pay than if they moved to Dublin, Kildare or Wicklow while they wait for a permanent post.

What is the Government's solution to make teaching in Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare attractive? It is to ban career breaks. This is diverting attention, which I agree with my colleague on, and it will not produce a solution. Career breaks have long been a feature which draw people into this profession. These are well-qualified and excellent professionals who are attracted to the flexibility that allows them to take time off to have a family, to do a degree or, unfortunately, in some cases to move abroad to save up for a deposit because it is impossible here with the price of rent. The Government is considering taking that away. In what world does that incentivise people to come back to teach? The solution to the staffing crisis is never to strip away the terms and conditions staff enjoy. The terms and conditions for teachers who are not on a permanent contract are already on the floor, and the Minister of State must know that. They are not paid over holiday periods and they are paid the bare minimum of sick pay, for example. It may have the opposite effect and it may well be the final straw that encourages people to leave the profession entirely. Because people are leaving the profession, retention is a huge issue. It is common to hear of principals leaving the profession, which I never heard of before. That would have been one of the sought-after positions but because the job has become increasingly impossible, principals are leaving.

We have to make teaching a more stable and attractive profession but we cannot blame teachers for the problem, which has basically been created by successive Governments. The shortage of teachers, nurses and other key staff is a symptom of a wider problem, namely the unaffordability and unavailability of housing, which is at the heart of so much of this. Unless that is rectified we will not get a solution to this that is sustainable into the future.

Deputy Jennifer Whitmore

Three and a half years ago I was chairperson of a primary school in Greystones, County Wicklow. Even then, we were finding it difficult to hire teachers. Even though it was a growing and good new school that was being built, it was so difficult. The reasons were accommodation and rental issues. If we fast-forward to today, we are at a crisis point with this issue.

This is not something that has happened recently; it has been building for many years. My constituency of Wicklow is being particularly impacted as one of the worst affected by this crisis. The Irish Primary Principals Network, in its recent survey, identified that 100% of schools in County Wicklow have had difficulties in hiring substitute teachers. Some 50% of schools in the county do not have their full allocation of teachers. Incredibly, some 96% of the schools have had to resort to redeploying their special education teachers, which is not something any principal would do lightly. I have spoken to people in these schools in recent weeks because I could see that this issue is building and I knew that we were having this debate in the Dáil today. I was surprised at the level of interaction I had from the schools within my constituency. I had a huge number of responses to it and they were all saying the same thing. It painted a stark picture of the conditions that principals, teachers and students are facing.

Principals tell me that every morning when they go into school, they are sick with worry about what phone call will come in and who will ring in sick. We have teachers who, even though they are sick, are going into school to teach because they do not want to let their classrooms, students or colleagues down. If we have learned anything in recent years, it is that when we are sick we need to stay at home. This is putting enormous pressure on our schools. One of the schools in Wicklow told me they were down one third of their teaching staff on a number of occasions in recent months. No principal can manage that situation.

It is not just the principals and teachers who are being impacted by this; it is also having a severe impact on children. For many children their schools are turning from an education facility into a supervision facility if their teachers are not available, particularly for those children who have additional needs, and those children are being left behind again. They were left behind during Covid and they are still trying to make up that time and here, yet again, the Department of Education is leaving them behind because this is not the fault of principals. I know the Minister of State will say, as the Taoiseach said to me recently in the Dáil, that this should never happen and that no special education teacher should be redeployed but the reality is that it is happening and that principals are having to make that decision. I would be interested to hear from the Minister of State what she says to principals if it is a case of redeploying a special education teacher or sending 30 children home. What do they do? The Department is putting them in an impossible situation due to its lack of planning on this issue. It is disgraceful that the supports that special education teachers provide are seen as discretionary by this Government because it knows they are the solution to this crisis that principals are having to deploy.

In preparation for this debate I had a look at the Department's website, where it talks about its values.

One is that the Department values its "staff and all those who work in schools and in other education settings." It claims to value its students and places "the student at the centre of education strategy and policy development." It is clear that those values are not being met.

The motion that we in the Social Democrats are bringing forward is a practical one based on finding solutions for this issue. We are not seeking to take political swipes. We want to work with the Government because we know it is a difficult situation. I hope the recommendations that have been made in this motion will be taken on board and that the Government will take them seriously to find solutions to the problems that have been identified. Speaking on behalf of the Social Democrats, if the Government were to take those solutions on board, we would support the Minister of State in that and work with her constructively to see them implemented. There are no winners in all this; just children losing out on time in the classroom with the resources they need and staff left spinning trying to keep everything going as best they can. We can all agree that cannot be anyone's idea of good enough.

Minister of State at the Department of Education (Deputy Josepha Madigan)

I am pleased to respond on behalf of the Government and to speak about our work in the area of teacher supply. The Minister, Deputy Foley, wanted to be here this morning to respond in person to the motion and listen to all the voices that will contribute to this important debate. Regrettably, she is present in her capacity as Minister for Education at the OECD ministerial conference taking place in Paris involving 38 members of the OECD and is thus unable to attend. She continues to work intensively with officials and stakeholders on this issue, however.

This is, of course, a priority area of action for the Department given the importance of ensuring that every child's experience in school is positive and that they have available to them qualified, engaged and supportive teachers to support them in their learning. We look forward to continuing work with key stakeholders in this regard.

The Department of Education runs a comprehensive programme of work to support the supply of teachers. Despite this work, it is acknowledged that problems persist when it comes to sourcing teachers. The nature of the challenges is different but also shared to some extent across the two sectors. At primary level, the vast majority of teaching posts are filled and challenges are more likely to arise in respect of securing substitute cover. Where challenges arise at post-primary level, it is more likely in respect of specific subject areas.

A challenge shared across primary and post-primary when it comes to vacancies are the wider societal challenges associated with the cost of living and availability of housing that every sector is facing, which has been mentioned. As Deputies know, the Government is investing hugely in this area through its Housing for All plan. In budget 2023, a package of €6.3 billion was announced, which included a commitment of €1.3 billion towards more affordable housing. A vacant homes tax is also committed to and legislation providing for its introduction is due to be enacted before the end of the year.

The Government also introduced the first ever stand-alone legislation to support the provision of more affordable housing via the Affordable Housing Act 2021, which provides for the now-established first home scheme, the local authority-led affordable purchase scheme and which introduced a new form of tenure in cost rental. Both affordable purchase and cost-rental schemes are now delivering new homes and funding is in place to deliver 28,000 homes under these schemes in the period to 2026.

While some have spoken of the current challenge as a recruitment and retention problem, the evidence does not support this. The number of teachers registered with the Teaching Council has more than doubled to more than 116,000 teachers since its establishment in 2006.

Demand at undergraduate level remains high and there was increased interest among CAO applicants for post-primary teaching programmes in 2022. Interest in the Professional Master of Education programmes also remains high. The changes made to the programmes have focused on improving the quality of teaching in our schools, which is central to the educational outcomes of our children. The professional master of education is also to be included in a longitudinal review of teacher education, which is a joint initiative of the Department and the Teaching Council.

In terms of employment arrangements, it should also be remembered that teachers can be recruited on a permanent basis once the school or education and training board, ETB, is within its authorised allocation of teaching posts and the criteria set by the Department for filling of teaching posts are complied with.

A number of measures and actions have been taken to assist in meeting the teacher supply challenges. First, approximately 3,500 newly-qualified teachers have had their registrations finalised by the Teaching Council to date in 2022. The number of newly-qualified primary school teachers qualifying in recent years has remained steady despite the reduction in demographics in the sector now taking place. The Teaching Council made regulations allowing for the registration of third and fourth year undergraduate initial teacher education students under a new registration route. This school year sees the full impact of this measure. So far, more than 2,100 student teachers have applied for registration to date with approximately 1,250 registered at this time.

Significant additional posts have also been allocated to the primary substitute teacher supply panels in areas where significant challenges in sourcing substitution continue. For 2022-23, there are 151 supply panels nationally, with an allocation of 610 posts covering 2,842 schools. Some 450 teachers have been appointed to these posts.

Launched in 2019, Sub Seeker is a central portal for short-term substitute vacancies, which was jointly developed by the Irish Primary Principals' Network and the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, in accordance with the Department of Education's teacher supply action plan. The portal matches available primary and post-primary teachers with short-term substitute vacancies. More than 11,800 teachers have registered with Sub Seeker to date.

On a temporary basis for the 2022-23 school year, job-sharing teachers may be employed to work as substitutes during the period they are rostered off-duty. The limit on substitute work applying to teachers on career break has also been temporarily suspended for the 2022-23 school year. A pension abatement waiver for retired teachers returning to teach for up to 50 days is available in each of the three calendar years 2021, 2022 and 2023.

The Department has put in place a scheme for the 2022-23 school year to allow post-primary teachers to teach in their subject area over the usual limit of 22 hours per week, up to a maximum of 20 additional hours per term.

Turasabhaile is a service developed by the post-primary school management bodies and National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals that matches registered teachers resident abroad with post-primary vacancies in schools in Ireland.

Free upskilling programmes are now available for post-primary registered teachers to upskill in subjects where teacher supply is tight such as in mathematics, Spanish and physics. These commenced in January 2021. Approximately 170 places were provided in the first intake across the three programmes with an increase in places to 310 for the class graduating in 2023. A new course for teachers to upskill in Irish will commence in 2023.

Higher education institutions have developed new four-year initial teacher education undergraduate programmes in a number of post-primary priority subject areas including Irish, mathematics, computer science and modern foreign languages. These new programmes mean that more student teachers can qualify to be post-primary teachers in four years instead of six and at much lower cost than the Professional Master of Education route. Following on from the Ward report, the qualification period for contracts of indefinite duration was reduced from three years to two years. The various measures to support teacher supply are underpinned by the Teaching Transforms campaign, which promotes the teaching profession and encourages students to follow a career in teaching.

In spite of the actions taken, the Government accepts that challenges remain and that further action is needed. The Minister, Deputy Foley, has updated the Government in respect of a range of actions that are being progressed, which I will set out.

The Department is in contact with some initial teacher education providers, including Hibernia College, with a view to maximising the availability of their Professional Master of Education students to undertake substitution work for the remainder of the school year.

The teacher supply panels at primary level are now being reviewed to evaluate their usage and effectiveness for the next school year. This may lead to some modification from the current approach in terms of how panels are used and how recruitment for the panels operates.

It is intended to consider, on a temporary basis and following engagement with the education partners, arrangements for co-operating teachers to allow them to substitute in other classes while a student teacher is on placement in their class.

The potential to suspend or amend on a temporary basis non-statutory leave arrangements, which have the effect of creating demand on substitution in schools, is also under consideration by the Department. A mechanism is being advanced to incentivise and support schools employing a teacher on less than full hours to use the teacher sharing scheme that has been developed.

Shortly, the Irish Primary Principals' Network is expected to launch its new central portal for the recruitment of teachers to long-term positions.

The portal is designed to match available teachers with vacancies in a user-friendly manner and provide an efficient application and recruitment process for both teachers and schools. The Department's recent report on developing a post-primary subject teacher demand and supply model for Ireland will provide a basis for further consultation with education stakeholders. It is planned to hold a workshop on this in the near future. Plans to attract students from more diverse backgrounds into teaching as a profession are also being developed.

There have been calls for union representation on the existing teacher supply structures and the establishment of an emergency task force. The current set of structures supporting the teacher supply work will be reviewed so their effectiveness can be maintained and enhanced, having regard to the current phase of the work. The Department of Education will augment the existing upskilling programmes in priority subject areas, both in terms of increasing participating numbers where needed and broadening them to include other subject areas with an identified supply shortfall. The Teaching Council is being asked to examine its current registration process for those qualified outside the State and to consider the temporary reintroduction of facilitating UK-trained teachers undertaking their induction in Ireland.

As Minister of State with responsibility for special education and inclusion, I want to say something specifically on the use of special education resources by schools, which has been raised by some Deputies this morning. The use of banked SET hours was an exceptional measure during the Covid-19 impact on schools. It was an urgent measure of last resort, following public health advice, and was not intended to be available on an ongoing basis due to the potential to impact negatively on students with special educational needs. Classes could not be split then but they can now.

Deputy Cian O'Callaghan

I thank the Minister of State for her response. Based on what she said, there is a lack of a sense of urgency on this. There is a sense of complacency. I will talk about the housing aspect of this issue and how this is affecting the shortage and the crisis we have in teaching staff. It is not just affecting those in the education sector but key workers in healthcare and across our society.

I will say one thing about the Minister of State's comments with regard to housing. People, teachers and other key workers who need housing need somewhere affordable to live. They cannot live in Government housing targets or plans. They need affordable homes to live in. We keep hearing about the Government's plans to do this or that but what is needed are actual homes, that are affordable, for people move into and live in. It is almost three years now since the general election and since this Government came into office. The time for talking about things has passed. The Government saying it is going to do X, Y and Z in the future is not good enough. We need action on this now.

I am constantly talking to people who are affected by this crisis. The housing crisis is impacting on schools and education in three particular ways. It is a direct cause of this shortage in teachers and staff. It has impacted heavily in the classroom on children's development and education, especially children who have become homeless. When there is a child or several children in the classroom who are living in emergency accommodation, it is massively disruptive to their education. That obviously has an effect on the entire class and their well-being. I am constantly talking to parents who say the great work they have done, with the support of teachers, special needs assistants, SNAs, and school staff, to get their child through learning difficulties and challenges is ripped to shreds when they are evicted into emergency accommodation away from their local communities.

Another effect of this that we have not talked about yet is that teachers are ending up having to commute very long distances to get to work and to the classroom. They are arriving exhausted. They are not getting the same time with their families that they should be. Any teacher, especially people who have been teaching for the last ten or 15 years, will tell you about the transformation in the challenges they face as teachers over that time. They have to do a huge amount now. They have to meet challenges outside of the formal education part of their role. They support their students and give extra support to students dealing with a variety of challenges, including mental health challenges and all the other challenges young people are facing now. With all those extra challenges being put on teachers, along with the housing challenges and the fact they might be commuting longer and longer distances from other counties, they are arriving exhausted. For the welfare of our students and our children in schools, we need their teachers and staff to be able to give everything to their roles. By taking away from that and not managing things like the housing disaster, it is impacting on the welfare of our children in schools. That will have long-term effects on us as a country and as a society.

As I said, this is not just something that affects teachers. We are seeing these effects in healthcare and across the board. Let us look at the Government's delivery on housing and what has happened since this Government took office. Rents have reached record levels, house prices have reached record levels and the number of people living in homeless emergency accommodation has reached record levels under this Government. The number of young people in their 20s and 30s living in their childhood bedrooms has reached record levels. I have lost count of the number of teachers I have met in my constituency who feel they are doing everything right in terms of working hard in their jobs and yet they are in their late 20s or early 30s and they have had to return home to their childhood bedrooms. That is ripping up the social contract for those teachers who are putting everything into their work but want to be able to build an independent life for themselves. That is not too much for anyone to expect.

Incredibly, despite all of us knowing all these things, this Government is somehow leaving unspent hundreds of millions of euro that were allocated to be spent on housing this year, which would help to alleviate some of the pressures teachers, schools and principals are facing. The fiscal monitor published by the Government a few days ago shows that at the end of November, over €700 million that was meant to be spent by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage so far this year had not been spent. This Government brought in Revised Estimates on housing this year. You would think, in this crisis, that such Estimates would involve hundreds of millions of euro of additional spending in housing to really get to grips with this disaster. Somehow, they did not involve additional spending but actually reallocated €337 million, which had been allocated to be spent on building much-needed new build local authority homes. That would take some of the pressure off the housing disaster we have, but instead that money was reallocated for other purposes and other headings, including €100 million to pay down local authority loans, instead of building those much-needed homes. Given the level of the disaster in housing and the impact it is having on our schools and on teachers, it is very hard to understand why this Government is not spending hundreds of millions of euro that it allocated to meet its targets in these areas. We have not had any satisfactory explanation from the Government as to why, in the middle of this disaster, that is what it is doing.

A number of things can be done immediately by the Government if it is serious about the housing disaster. Yesterday my colleague Deputy Shortall raised the tax on vacant homes with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath. It has not been introduced yet, but it has been set at a miserly and ineffective 0.3%. The Government's projections in this regard show that the new tax will have a minimal impact on getting vacant homes back into use. According to the census figures, there are somewhere in the region of 160,000 vacant homes around the country, many of which could be brought back into use. If there was an effective tax put on them, tens of thousands of homes could be brought back into use and teachers and other workers would be able to avail of them. If the Government was serious about this crisis and disaster, it would do that, and do so immediately, rather than bringing in an ineffective measure it knows is designed to fail.

We keep on hearing from the Government and from different Ministers that the latest thing it will do to address this housing disaster will be to throw tax incentives at developers. Almost three years since the election, having failed to meet all its targets on housing in terms of affordable homes, cost-rental homes and the delivery of social homes, it is now grasping at this and throwing even more incentives at developers. Instead of doing that, the Government should clearly be using the resources it has to ensure, through direct building, that we get the affordable purchase, rental and social homes which are needed to take pressures off schools and teachers. Instead, the latest idea is to throw more incentives at developers and hope for the best, the latest attempt to resuscitate the build-to-rent sector and the investment funds, where that level of funding is now in difficulty, rather than looking at direct-build measures that would alleviate this crisis. I do not think the scale of this crisis and how it is affecting schools, children or teachers in schools, are understood by this Government. There are measures the Government could be taking right now to alleviate the housing disaster element of this and we just do not see it doing that. We do not see it taking this seriously and we do not see the kind of urgent action needed from the Government to ensure our children in our schools get the best possible education and the best possible support from their teaching staff.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Mattie McGrath)

Bogaimid ar aghaidh le Páirtí Shinn Féin. Tá cúig nóiméad ag an Teachta Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire.

Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire

Ar an gcéad dul síos, tréaslaím leis an rún seo ó Pháirtí na nDaonlathaithe Sóisialta. I commend the Social Democrats on this very well put together and timely motion. It contains a number of suggestions which I urge the Minister to take on board. The current crisis in our schools is quite profound. It exists absolutely everywhere but is most severe in the big cities and on the east coast. Some 60% of places on the substitute panels in Dublin are vacant. There are occasions when if three teachers are out, schools are only able to find one substitute. I know St. James's Primary School found itself in this situation in late November. Similarly, it is a base school for a substitute panel and advertised for places on that panel seven times and did not find somebody to take up the position. It is very clear this is taking up an enormous amount of time from principals and puts pressure on them, but more importantly it is having a huge adverse impact on the education our children are getting. As has been acknowledged, there are implications for children with special educational needs. It also means schools are having to remove subjects from the curriculum - I know that is the case in the instance of Coolmine Community School in Dublin. It means classes are being put together and in different combinations and it is hugely adversely affecting children's ability to learn. Tá sé sin dhá uaire níos measa do scoileanna atá ag feidhmiú trí mheán na Gaolainne. Bhí easpa múinteoirí ann cheana féin do go leor ábhar ag an dara leibhéal sna Gaelcholáistí agus tá an fhadhb níos measa fós sna scoileanna sin.

I have debated this with the Minister and the Minister of State a number of times over the past couple of weeks and I have acknowledged that some of the actions taken, such as, for example, allowing retired teachers to do more substitutions, were welcome. This latest proposal is quite remarkable. I am trying to imagine the meeting in the Department of Education and how deep it had to dig into the bowels of the Department to find the so-called solution it could somehow pin on the trade unions and put the Department on the opposite side. Could it look at permanent contracts at any time throughout the year? No, it was decided that was not going to work. Could it offer post-primary teachers more full-time contracts? No, that would not work either. Could it offer teachers coming back from England the option to complete their training or initial period here, such as happened during Covid-19? No, that was not going to work either. The Department would have had to go through 15 or 20 solutions to come up with this one, really rooting down the back of the couch to try to find it. Another issue on top of that is the message this sends to young mothers looking to go into a profession that is primarily female.

I note the Minister cannot be here and I acknowledge there is a very legitimate reason for that. I do not have an issue with that and hope that officials from her Department are carefully listening to this. I also hope officials from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage are listening because the responsibility for this issue lies just as much with that Department as it does with the Department of Education. Undoubtedly, there are many more things that could be done and I have given examples of the kind of things the Department of Education could be doing. However, at the end of the day, we are facing this issue because teachers cannot afford to rent in Dublin or the major cities, they have no hope of putting together a mortgage in the major cities and many of them can barely afford to do so in this country and are looking at the Middle East and Britain. The fact is that the Government is failing so profoundly on the housing crisis. Rents, house prices and the numbers of people in homelessness are at record levels and the one thing the Minister is clinging to, which is the commencements, is down too. By every metric the Government is failing and it is for that reason we are losing teachers to different professions, from the cities and to other countries. This problem is only going to get worse unless the Government gets to grips with this housing crisis. Not only that but it is going to spread to other disciplines, not just in the public sector or in the private sector. More and more, we are going to find a shortage of key, skilled, front-line workers unless the Government finally gets to grips with this and changes course because what it is doing now is not working.

Deputy Louise O'Reilly

I thank the Deputies for bringing forward this very timely, and as my colleague has alluded to, very well put together motion. Before I came in, I spoke to the principal of a primary school and she told me that the reality is that they cannot teach children without teachers yet teachers are being exported daily. She told me that without substitute teachers being available, she is constantly having to split classes or as a last resort, cancel learning support meaning they cannot make good the gaps left by Covid-19. As a principal in a DEIS school, she and her teachers go above and beyond for the pupils, because they desperately need education. As the Minister of State knows, education in DEIS schools is about much more than just sitting in the classroom and teaching. It is about the whole school experience and is very often the only place where a child will get a hot meal, a listening ear and all of those things. This principal has extremely dedicated teachers who are really committed to their work but they feel like the Department is forcing them to emigrate. The Minister of State says in her contribution that she is looking at the potential to suspend or amend on a temporary basis, non-statutory leave arrangements which have the effect of creating demand on substitution in schools. I say to the Minister of State that suspending career breaks and attacking the terms and conditions of teachers sends exactly the wrong message. She could look at offering teachers permanent contracts, at full-time contracts or at ensuring the profession of teaching in this State is made more attractive. She could, of course, though this might be a bit wild, just look at building houses and tackling the housing crisis that 12 years of the Minister of State's party in government has created so teachers could have somewhere to live. Having somewhere to live has now become an aspiration for teachers rather than something they can assume will happen. With 60% of posts on the primary substitute panel in Dublin currently vacant, what is the Minister of State's answer? Cutting the rights and entitlements of teachers and attacking their working conditions is not going to work. The Minister of State should use her time in the wrap-up to withdraw that silly proposal.

Deputy Kathleen Funchion

I thank Deputy Gannon and the Social Democrats. I very much welcome this motion. It is a very serious issue and in the short time I have, I will mainly focus on the impact it is having on children and their educational opportunities. We get one chance in the school system. Every child is obviously different and it can be very difficult for some children, particularly in the aftermath of Covid-19.

It has always frustrated me that after Covid-19 schools went back to a more normal system and children were just expected to slot back in. There was not the recognition that should have been there. Additional resource hours were given in some cases but not all. It is as though that year and a half did not happen. Now we see a situation where children are back into the school system and are trying to catch up. Many children are still trying to catch up on the basics of reading, writing and spelling, depending on the age they were and what class they were in when the lockdowns happened. Homeschooling was a complete disaster and no child benefited from it. After Covid-19 we needed to put a great deal more resources in. What has happened is a serious shortage of teachers and that is having an impact. It is unacceptable that children have different teachers or they might have free classes. Kids love the excitement of going to school and having no classes for a day but in the long term that is not going to benefit them. It is totally unfair to the teachers who are doing their best and, in some circumstances, coming in when they are sick and they know they should be out. They are doing their best because they do not want to let the students down. Teachers are being driven out of our cities by the cost of housing and the inability to find housing. To say it is a mess is an understatement. I agree with my colleagues who said the Government's proposal is ridiculous. It is a divide-and-conquer mentality rather than examining the solutions at which we should look in regard to housing and ensuring we have adequate teaching staff.

Deputy Pauline Tully

I welcome this motion and commend the Social Democrats on tabling it. We have a severe crisis in teacher supply at present in both primary and post-primary schools, primarily caused by the cost and availability of housing throughout the country, especially in Dublin and other urban centres. It is greatly exacerbated by the current cost-of-living crisis. Teachers, particularly lower-paid younger teachers, cannot afford the rental costs and have little prospect of being able to manage a mortgage in the big urban centres. While the cost and availability of housing and the cost-of-living crisis are the primary factors, they are not the only problems that led to this crisis. There has been, and continues to be, a lack of planning in the recruitment and retention of teachers going back years. I taught in secondary school and for years we could not get Irish teachers; then we could not get French teachers; and then we could not get mathematics teachers. There has been an issue for a number of years in certain subject areas at second level. There is a pattern to this lack of preparedness across services that are in crisis, including teachers, housing and the health service. It is traced back to inadequate and short-sighted Government policy. At post-primary level in particular, it is about the creation of additional positions. Too many teachers are on insecure, temporary contracts and are underemployed. That is the key part of addressing the supply issue at this level. Delays in registration with the Teaching Council particularly affect teachers who qualified abroad and could be easily addressed and rectified. The cost of the professional master of education, PME, is excessive and reducing that needs to be looked at as well. The Government could remove the October and November cut-offs for permanent contracts so that teachers coming home for Christmas or from abroad would have the opportunity to get full-time contracts that would keep them here. As it stands, they have to apply for a temporary contract, not be paid over the summer and then take their chances for the next year. Cuts to middle management and posts with responsibility imposed in 2009 have not been fully restored. It is crucial to boost promotional prospects within the teaching profession to encourage more people to become teachers. More full-time contracts, promotional opportunities and competitive salaries are needed. More houses also need to be built to address the housing shortage.

I am concerned about special education teachers being removed and being put in to manage mainstream classes. Children with special needs are then affected most.

Deputy Mairéad Farrell

It is no surprise to any of us who have been living in any of our cities over the past number of years that it is becoming increasingly difficult to live in them. Rents continue to increase. We saw the astounding figures yesterday relating to how much they have increased since 2010. It comes as no surprise that people are finding it impossible to live in the cities. Many have to commute further and further. The lessons we learned from Covid-19 about having a work-life balance have been knocked on the head. The reality for many teachers is that insecure, temporary contracts have a massive impact. We have all seen it in our families and among our friends. People have to move from one end of the country to the other end to try to find a place to work. This is not a new issue. It is not just affecting our cities; it affects our offshore islands as well. There used to an allowance of more than €2,000 for teachers living on our offshore islands who might only get a few hours a week in a particular school. They used to get a small allowance to move there or to help them with the commute, which is obviously a difficult commute. However, that allowance was taken away. I have raised this issue previously and it needs to be examined. Another issue I feel strongly about is that some islands, such as Inishbofin, do not have a secondary school. I have been trying to raise this issue in the Chamber for some time. Children who are leaving primary school have to move onto the mainland. Tá mé théis é seo a ardú go rímhinic ach tá sé fíorthábhachtach go dtiocfadh an liúntas ar ais a bhíodh ag múinteoirí i dtaca dul chuig na hoileáin amach ón gcósta. Tuigimid cé chomh deacair is atá sé do na scoileanna ar na hoileáin daoine a earcú mar gheall go bhfuil costas sa bhreis ann chun bogadh amach go dtí na hoileáin nó chun dul amach i gcomhair cúpla uair in aghaidh na seachtaine. Caithfear breathnú air sin. Tagraím don stuif mar gheall ar stop a chur le career breaks; seafóid iomlán atá ann.

Deputy Mark Ward

During the recess, I and my constituency colleague, Deputy Eoin Ó Broin, took on the task of writing to every school in Dublin Mid-West to request that we meet them. The purpose was to find out directly from the schools the challenges they face. We met representatives of approximately 25 schools. The schools have several common issues, one of which is the shortage of teachers. There is a problem in recruiting and retaining teachers throughout the State but it is particularly stark in Dublin. The cost of living in Dublin means it is unsustainable for teachers to work in our city and county. The Government’s disastrous record on housing has pushed house prices and rents through the roof. Figures released this week show that rents have increased by 82% in 12 years. It is no coincidence that Fine Gael has been in government and in charge of housing for those years. How can any profession maintain staffing levels while facing such pressures? School principals told me that they simply cannot attract teachers to work in Dublin as the cost of living is lower back home. Many teachers are returning to live as adults in their family home. Emigration is also attracting teachers. I refer to the remark of the outgoing Tánaiste or is he the incoming Taoiseach? I get lost with what is going on at the moment; it is like a weird version of Lanigan’s Ball - “I step out so he can step in again.” His remark that the grass is not greener flies in the face of teachers who are making informed decisions to emigrate to make a new life for themselves.

We have been inundated in my area with concerned parents contacting our offices worried they will not have a school place for their children in September. Years of underinvestment by successive governments have led to a crisis in our education system. Years of delays, extensions and new builds have not allowed schools to grow in line with the population growth in their surrounding area. Dublin Mid-West is one of the fastest-growing areas in Ireland and school places have not kept up with demand. Each school has its own enrolment policy that is independent, and rightly so, and overseen by its board of management. Some boards have told me they had to tighten their entry criteria as the demand simply outweighs supply. As with all aspects of society, be it housing, health, mental health, the Government has failed the people in education.

Deputy Patricia Ryan

It is like a game of pass the parcel here with Ministers this morning. I wish to thank the Social Democrats. The Minister must listen to the principals and teachers who are on the front line. They have the answers and so far the INTO has deplored her lack of engagement and consultation on potential changes to members' terms and conditions. The TUI said that her proposals would make the profession less attractive and, ultimately, worsen the teacher recruitment and teaching crisis. It also criticised the lack of consultation.

A recent TUI survey found that 91% of secondary schools experienced teacher recruitment difficulties in the past six months while 61% experienced teacher retention difficulties. The system of banked hours that operated in schools at the height of the Covid pandemic needs to be reinstated immediately. Kildare is one of the worst affected areas. In an IPPN survey, 63% of respondents said they did not have access to a fully staffed supply panel, 92% have ongoing challenges in recruiting substitute teachers and 100% have had to redeploy a special education teacher to cover a mainstream class. Our most vulnerable children are suffering. Shortages at secondary level are more widespread and are severe in particular subjects. The Government failure to plan ahead is the cause of this crisis and the root cause, as many other Deputies have said, is the cost of living and housing.

I hope the Minister of State is listening. The principals and teachers who are on the front line have answers and they need to be looked at. A new secondary school will open in Monasterevin in the next year but it will be beyond capacity on the day it opens. That is simply not good enough. Things need to change and we need action.

Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin

The members of the Government have surpassed themselves today. I was speaking to somebody in the education sphere last week. Our conversation turned to teacher shortages and the person said to me that whatever those in government come up with, we can be sure their plan will put the blame on teachers. Sure enough, as if by magic, just as they are scrambling around to try to find answers to come up with some sort of a response to the excellent motion tabled by my colleague, Deputy Gary Gannon, and the Social Democrats, they have done it again.

It reminds me of the time during the pandemic when the schools were closed because that was the medical advice, and there was controversy over how we could reopen schools. Despite the fact that the Government was not listening to school leaders, was not prioritising air filtration systems in schools, was not investing in schools and was not providing support for teachers, at the end of the day, when it came down to it, what the Government wanted the parents’ conversations at dinner tables and on WhatsApp groups to be about was that this was not really about Government inaction or about failures of Government, and was not even about the virus, it was about teachers. Then, when it came to the spectacular failure of the Government to find school places last September for children with additional needs, despite the fact it had to ram through emergency legislation at the end of June and it was about Government inaction in that space, what it also managed to do as a Government was to blame individual schools, and teachers and principals in those schools, with one Minister naming four schools. Again, what they were hoping would be said on the WhatsApp groups, at the school gates and at dinner tables was that it was not about Government inaction and it was about these teachers and principals, and, in fact, it was about those four individual schools that were named by that Minister. Again, it was the teachers' fault.

Then, today, in spectacular fashion, when every teacher, principal and SNA we speak to refers to the housing crisis when it comes to the teacher supply problem, the Minister of State comes in and reads out a 15-page speech, one page of which is about housing. Then, the Government manages through leaks from Cabinet discussions to put the blame on those pesky teachers and their career breaks. Once again, the teacher supply problem is not about Government inaction or about housing, it is about teachers again. What the Government wants to have in all these debates about school reopening during Covid is that it is kind of the teachers’ fault; or regarding lack of places for children with additional needs, again, it is the teachers’ fault; and now, the fact we cannot get teachers is the teachers’ fault. It is unbelievable. I will tell the Minister of State, flatly and plainly, that the only reason the education system has not completely and utterly collapsed is because of the goodwill and the professionalism of the teachers that the Government seems determined to malign, along with SNAs and the wider school community.

Let us talk plainly about what the problem is: it is a housing problem. I do not want to have a debate that pits rural against urban Ireland but let us be frank. The Government is allowing Dublin to die on its watch. We cannot get teachers, nurses or gardaí to live in the capital city and to serve it. Our schools are being bled of talent that could teach these children, and the children feel it and know it because they are in classrooms without a teacher, or with a substitute teacher, or else they have a succession of teachers. They know there is something wrong. By the way, oftentimes these teachers, if they happen to have a chance to teach, are teaching children who are also affected by the homelessness crisis and the housing crisis, living with their parents in their grandparents’ house. I know of a particular school, with which I have a personal relationship, where I was told the situation has completely changed over the past 12 years and that 24% of the children are now in homelessness.

Yet, when the Government has a chance to respond to today's motion, what does it do? It wants those of us in opposition who are talking about teacher supply to have to talk about career breaks, not about housing. It is unbelievable that it has constructed a narrative today where we are talking about career breaks for teachers, not about housing.

I feel that the city I love, the city I grew up in, the city I live in and the city I care about, is dying on this Government’s watch fundamentally because we cannot get nurses because they say they cannot live in Dublin. The Tánaiste seems to think that what gardaí need is a gun rather than a gaff. Teachers are being priced out of the city.

We need to talk seriously about a Dublin allowance. It is going to get people in the Rural Independent Group very excited when a Deputy stands up and says that. That is fair enough. They have this in London. When they had a teacher shortage issue in London, they recognised that the cost-of-living issue in the city was serious and because they needed teachers to teach London kids, it was seen as that important, given the particular pressures in London. Let us talk seriously about it here in Dublin as well. Let us talk seriously about providing a standard of living for teachers in Dublin so it should not be an aspiration for someone to be a teacher and to live and work in Dublin. That should not be outside the capacity of a teacher. The State needs to recognise that and introduce a Dublin allowance.

That is a much more constructive idea for the Government to toss around the place, rather than having an onslaught once again on teachers' pay and conditions. I swear to God that if any of those in government, whether in Cabinet or on the backbenches, spent five minutes in a school classroom, they would not be able to survive because of the number of skills and competencies they would need. They should back off from the teachers and their terms and conditions, and realise that what they are doing is overseeing a housing crisis that is pushing teachers out of Dublin and affecting the children of the city. It is not good enough and they need to sort it out.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Mattie McGrath)

We move to People Before Profit-Solidarity. I call Deputy Paul Murphy, who is sharing time with Deputy Mick Barry.

Deputy Paul Murphy

Last week, we heard about a crisis in our banking sector and that we cannot attract the bankers we need to lead our banks like they did before the crisis. The answer from the Government for that crisis was to get rid of the pay cap of €500,000 so we can pay them millions of euro like they were paid before the banking crisis that we all experienced.

This week, we hear about a much more important, severe and impactful crisis in terms of teacher shortages, which is having a significant impact on children across the country, particularly in Dublin. What is the Government's answer? It is to get rid of teachers' career breaks. That tells us everything we need to know about whom the Government represents and whom it does not.

It is incredible that we have a crisis that is acknowledged by everybody in the know, one that is caused by terms and conditions for teachers, an inability to recruit and maintain teachers in their positions and the housing crisis. Those are the two key factors that are driving the crisis whereby 91% of school have experienced teacher recruitment difficulties in the past six months and 61% of schools experienced teacher retention difficulties, yet the Government's answer is to suspend career breaks. In advance of this response by the Government, the TUI warned that, "Announcing limited measures yet again in relation to career breaks, job-sharing and the taking of additional hours will do nothing to tackle the significant problems being experienced in schools around the country." Yet here we have it - the Government's answer to teaching not being sustainable for teachers is to take a measure to make the profession less attractive and, ultimately, worsen the teacher recruitment and retention crisis.

Meaningful action means tackling the housing crisis. It means introducing rent controls to bring rents down to affordable levels, as well as building social and genuinely affordable homes on a massive scale. It also means addressing the conditions faced by teachers. It means offering them whole-time jobs when they start their careers, unlike the 65% of teachers appointed after 2011 who did not get a contract of full hours upon initial appointment. It means restoring all of the posts immediately, which ensures the smooth running of schools while providing promotional opportunities for teachers which, again, will help to boost retention. The action the Government needs to take is obvious but, instead, it is insisting on blaming teachers for the crisis.

Deputy Bríd Smith

I wish to highlight a connected matter that has not yet been raised. I thank the Social Democrats for tabling the motion. I will take the example of a schoolteacher from Pakistan who teaches in Our Lady of Lourdes National School in Goldenbridge, Dublin 8. It is a DEIS school. Members may be familiar with it. The teacher in question came from Pakistan on a 1G graduate visa, trained here as a special needs teacher and started working in Goldenbridge last January. Her visa is now under application for renewal but there are two different systems in play. One is that the Department of Education told the school it had to advertise the job in a certain manner, and it did so, and Zabaria Peter, the woman in question, got the job. The Department of Justice states the school has to advertise it in a different way, but the Departments will not speak to one another. They do not communicate. I find this in every aspect of this Government. Two sides of the same coin do not deal with one another. This woman is being put out of Goldenbridge school. She is to lose her job having been educated but, more important, the kids are going to lose her. The special needs kids in the school love her, as do their parents and the community. She is doing a brilliant job.

This brings me to another issue, which is the messed up attitude to immigration in this country. There is currently a big row going on about immigration in all corners of the country. Let us remember, however, that for all the hysteria in respect of refugees, every single one of them comes with a pair of hands, a brain and a hungry belly. That means they can contribute to this society, as Zabaria is doing, rather than being seen as a burden on it. I visited a refugee camp in Greece during the Syrian war. Most of the adults I met there were highly trained, educated and skilled people who wanted to work in the system - as maths teachers, engineers, builders, medics and all sorts of other things. It is about time we had that conversation in this country, as well as the whole conversation in respect of housing. Those issues are linked. We cannot keep looking at people as though they are a burden or a problem. Everybody has something to contribute to society. The person some people think they hate today could be the bus driver, home builder, schoolteacher or hospital nurse or doctor of tomorrow. I again appeal for the Department of Education to speak to the Department of Justice, which has responsibility for immigration, regarding this woman at Goldenbridge school. It should do the kids and the community a favour and keep her in the job she loves and wants to be in.

Deputy Mick Barry

There is not a lack of teachers; it is full-time permanent teaching posts of which there is a lack. Why would a young teacher who is thinking of emigrating after Christmas stick around for a one-year contract? Why would a person who has already emigrated come back for a one-year contract? Teachers coming back to Dublin or Cork will be asked to pay €25,000 a year rent in one city and €20,000 a year in the other. The Government let the market set the price for the pay of chief executive officers of banks. It broke the €500,000 ceiling because bankers were going to London, Paris or Frankfurt for work. It plays a completely different set of rules, however, for teachers and other key workers, such as nurses. They go to Australia or Canada but the Government keeps their pay at levels that do not allow them to live a decent life. To add insult to injury, the Government is trying to put the blame on teachers by attempting to make this a debate about career breaks. It needs to back off on that one.

This issue creates real problems for students. Schools that cannot recruit or retain teachers are doubling up on classes. Subjects are being dropped, unqualified teachers are being drafted in to teach classes and principals are shoring up the situation by bringing in special needs assistants to plug the gap.

I congratulate the parents and teachers of Coolmine Community School in Dublin West, who are campaigning to highlight these issues and pushing for change. If their example was followed across the country, that would be very positive. If the teacher unions were to campaign and take action on this issue, there would be a high level of public support.

There are many things the Government could do. It could bring back the posts of responsibility and pay for them. Opening that up again would be a positive step.

Ultimately, this is about permanent posts and affordable housing. The vacancies should not be advertised as temporary posts. Every vacancy should be made a permanent position. If the Government does that, the so-called teacher shortage crisis will quickly come under control. It needs to make the temporary posts permanent and tackle the issue of affordable housing.

Deputy Peadar Tóibín

I thank the Social Democrats for tabling the motion. This is a massively important issue, one that has been playing on the minds of parents, teachers and students across the country for several years. I am a parent of four young children who are in school. Their school is excellent and does wonderful work in giving the children the skills they will need for the future. However, schools have been struggling significantly and consistently in recent years. Many principals are spending all their time trying to get teachers into the schools and, when they cannot do so, they are spending all their time splitting classes up and distributing them among the rest of the classes in the school.

The major difficulty here is that we have a generation of young children who have had the longest and most severe lockdown in Europe in terms of their access to education in schools. Now that they are back, they need extra help and support to catch up on what they have lost in the past two years but that help and support are not available. The results of this will manifest themselves in these children's futures. The lack of proper education in classes across the country currently means they will not reach their potential.

A survey carried out by the TUI found that 91% of secondary schools experienced problems in recruiting teachers in the past six months, while 61% of secondary schools had major problems in respect of retention. The survey found that 80% of school leaders are reporting problems finding staff more broadly.

Some 55% of principals reported they had significant vacancies in their own schools at the time of the survey, while more than 84% of principals said they experienced situations during the past school year where no teacher applied for advertised posts. We are in a massive crisis regarding this matter. It is absurd that the Government is talking about dealing with this crisis by potentially suspending career breaks for teachers because at the heart of this problem is the fact that the terms and conditions for teachers are not attractive enough at present to bring people into the sector. If the Government deletes one of the key elements of the terms and conditions for teachers, all it will do is make it less attractive for teachers to get involved in education in the future. The terms and conditions for teachers are made up of many different elements, including, obviously, salary and how far that salary goes in paying for the key necessities of life. I will speak to that in a couple of minutes. Those terms and conditions, however, also include the number of students in classes, investment in schools, the quality and conditions that exist in schools, and the pressures teachers are under in schools at present.

On the salaries that teachers are currently experiencing, it is an incredible situation that, in real terms, when considering expenditure by a young teacher, teachers' salaries have significantly reduced over the past ten years. A teacher working in the Dublin area at present will pay approximately €1,600 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. That adds up to more than €19,000 a year. Based on the current starting salary of a teacher, that leaves approximately €10,000 to pay for things such as tax, heating, food, transport and anything else a young, professional teacher might have to deal with on a year-to-year basis. The salary the Government is providing, taking account of the housing crisis that exists, is simply not attractive enough to get professionals into the sector. In addition, we are living in a global market so teachers are being employed elsewhere in the world. Their skills are highly valued and, with low employment rates, teachers can go into other sectors of the economy, work there and earn a good living.

The crisis the Government allowed to develop in the housing market over the past number of years, which is getting worse, is having the effect that young people cannot work in this sector, especially in large urban areas. If they are to work in such areas, in many cases, they either have to live at home or commute long distances. Asking teachers to commute two or three hours a day to work in urban areas is just not good enough. This crisis is of the Government's making. It has to be resolved through the Government focusing on the salaries and conditions of teachers and the cost of living they are experiencing. Unless it gets to grips with that, this situation will last into the future.

Teachers have been dealing with other elements of their terms and conditions. Many teachers were paid for responsibilities and posts previously. Due to the cuts after 2010, they were deleted and much of that has not been returned to teachers as of yet. There is also the differential caused by the two-tier pay delivered to teachers, especially young teachers entering the market, after 2010. That differential has left a big financial hole in the experience of many teachers in this country.

Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party are presiding over the corrosion of the education system in this country in a way that is having a material and negative effect on the outcomes of this generation of students in schools. That will manifest itself in a range of different issues, including mental health, reaching their full potential in the future, productivity, and incomes of those children. This Government needs to take this crisis seriously. It should not allow it to simply stagger on year after year but get to grips with it. Education is one of the most important services we provide as a State. If we consider the amount of money we are paying off in interest on the national debt, it is not that far off the total budget for the education system in this country. That is an incredible thing. The interest we are paying off on the national debt is not that far off the total budget for the education system in this country.

We have to take education seriously. This country prides itself and sells itself internationally on having a quality-educated generation but that will not last. There will be a major cost to the country, as well as individuals within society, unless the Government gets to grips with this issue. At present, the crisis in education is so bad that many teachers are finding it very difficult to stay in the profession. Is fadhb ollmhór é seo agus caithfidh an Rialtas glacadh leis go tapa.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

I too compliment the Social Democrats on tabling this motion, which is very timely. I do not agree with Deputy Barry on much, but I agree with everything he said. We can pay the bankers, or any of the senior civil servants in Departments who want to move extra money, but we cannot support our teachers. They play such an important role in giving tuition, learning, education and life skills to na daoine óga, our children. Is mór an trua é. The situation is not good enough and it is right across the spectrum.

I will mention the Department of Education. The Minister of State claims to have invested additional funding in special education resources but this is not reflected in the experiences of schools, according to the National Principals' Forum. In the area in which I live, we have had no special educational needs organiser, SENO, for a prolonged period of nearly six months. The SENO who is covering fails to respond to queries and parents are fobbed off. All the autism spectrum disorder, ASD, units are full, with no places available at all in south Tipperary. I support all the boards of management, principals, and assistant principals in the job they do, with such scarce and minuscule resources and such a lack of respect from the Department of Education. It is quite shocking and just not good enough. This is another failure by the Government of our children with additional needs.

We urgently need to take action to address the failures. According to the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, we see teachers voting with their feet and going abroad. What did the Government do this week? It decided, above all times and when there is such a crisis, to cancel or try to wipe out extended leave and career breaks for teachers. It just beggars belief that the Government would do this. What has it got against teachers? As I said, our youth are most important.

Of course, the Rural Independent Group values our refugees. I do not need a lecture from an Teachta Bríd Smith about that. We value every human being from the womb to the tomb, as far as I am concerned. We do not have any issue with that.

Deputy Michael Collins

I thank the Social Democrats for tabling this motion. A recent Teachers' Union of Ireland survey found 91% of post-primary schools experienced teacher recruitment difficulties in the past six months, while 61% experienced teacher retention difficulties. Some special education teachers are being forced to plug gaps in primary school mainstream classrooms. A recent survey by the Irish Primary Principals' Network found 83% of schools, as a last resort, have had to redeploy special education teachers to mainstream classes in order to plug the gaps.

On 29 November 2022, the Taoiseach stated in the House that, as a basic principle, he thought teachers and special needs resources should stay in special needs and "resources should always be ring-fenced for special needs students." On "Morning Ireland" on 30 November 2022, the Minister of State at the Department of Education, Deputy Madigan, said that she has always made it clear in her capacity as Minister of State with responsibility for special education and inclusion that no special education teachers or special needs assistants should be used other than for the purposes for which they were assigned. That is happening, however. It should not be happening but, unfortunately, it is. That is quite clear.

There has been a lot of talk in the Chamber about Dublin, including accommodation and so on. I am on the board of a school. I was chairperson of that board for many years and am now just a board member. I know the difficulties there are in getting teachers. It must be remembered that in rural areas there are often significant travel issues relating to the price of fuel and so on. That is a big issue. It is no wonder we are losing talented teachers and they are going abroad. There are also issues relating to the school capitation grants.

I thank Our Lady of Mercy National School in Bantry, where I attended a debate on Monday. I thank Ms Karen Buckley and Ms Maeve Keane, two of its teachers, and I wish Ms Maria Power the best on her retirement.

Deputy Michael Healy-Rae

I thank the Social Democrats for this important Private Members' business. It is a serious issue in County Kerry, where many schools are coming to me about seeking help from the Department of Education with the staffing crisis, which has left many vulnerable pupils without specialised support. There is a critical time in a young person's life when he or she needs direct intervention and assistance. If the school the young person is attending is suffering staffing shortages at that time, then the child and his or her parents will spend the following years trying to catch up. This is not acceptable. When a child needs assistance, support and extra tuition and guidance but those are not available at a critical time, the child will fall behind. Schools and principals I am dealing with all around the county of Kerry are telling me that they are experiencing these problems. At a time when so much in taxes is being paid by the hard-working parents and other taxpayers of Ireland, it is not good enough that we do not have adequate resources in our schools when we need them.

I plead with the Minister of State on behalf of the principals, who work so hard with their teachers, boards of management and priests. Many Deputies would hate to recognise the value of priests and the Catholic religion, but I support them-----

Deputy Richard O'Donoghue

Hear, hear.

Deputy Michael Healy-Rae

-----and thank them for their efforts in teaching our people down the years.

Deputy Richard O'Donoghue

I offer my condolences to the Minister of State and his family on the death of his uncle, Michael, who was a former Deputy. I worked with his son, James, on the council.

Teacher recruitment in key areas like Irish, maths, home economics and French is difficult in most second level schools. Most secondary schools have vacancies, according to a survey of principals. A TUI poll of almost 100 principals and deputy principals found that 91% had experienced difficulty in hiring qualified teachers in the past six months. The union has stated that recruitment and retention problems are affecting the quality of education for students, who can miss out on subject choices. Some teachers are getting minimum contract hours and are unable to pay their rents or for cars to drive to school.

Like gardaí, teachers can be placed anywhere in the country. This is not affordable. I listened to Deputy Ó Ríordáin of the Labour Party speaking about Dublin, the capital. When Labour was in government, it helped to destroy Dublin by overpopulating it. If the population was spread around the country, it would help businesses, schools and everything else. Every Deputy has his or her own capital, and mine is Limerick. I will do whatever I must for Limerick city and county. That is what I am here to do. Rural Independents have been blamed for this situation, but we are not to blame. It was the fault of the Labour Party when it was in government, when it destroyed Dublin and made it too expensive for anyone who wants to work and live here. That is on Labour's own back.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Mattie McGrath)

Next is Deputy Pringle, who is sharing time with Deputy Harkin.

Deputy Thomas Pringle

I thank the Chair for the opportunity to speak on this important motion, which I fully support.

We are facing a serious teacher shortage issue, with the education of our children at stake. The fact that 91% of our secondary schools are experiencing teacher recruitment issues is concerning. The TUI survey, which is mentioned in the motion, revealed that 71% of schools that advertised jobs in recent months had not got a single applicant. That is unbelievable. There is not a single area in the country that is not affected by this. My constituency of Donegal is experiencing significant problems in recruiting and retaining teachers. Parents will know this, as their children are having to sit through free class after free class while principals struggle to find teachers to even supervise those classes, never mind actually teach them.

The Government can hardly be surprised at this stage. Consider for a moment what this country offers our teachers: an accommodation shortage; high rental costs; no hope of ever buying or building a house; a cost-of-living crisis; long commutes; a skeleton public transport service; a broken healthcare system; astronomical childcare costs; few permanent teaching contracts; job instability; and a low standard of living. Is it any wonder that we are seeing such high emigration rates among our newly qualified teachers as well as our newly qualified nurses and, indeed, all young people who are newly qualified and in search of a decent standard of living? This is no country for young people. Sadly, it is no country for anyone at the minute.

Schools are relying heavily on student teachers. PME students are working hard to fill the gap left by teacher shortages. Without them, schools would even struggle to open. I have been contacted by many PME students who are finding the pressure of this, as well as college and other work, difficult. To complete a PME, one needs to complete two years at college and 440 hours of placement in a school. However, most PME students are now expected by schools to work a full school week due to current shortages. This would be difficult enough in itself, but most PME students are forced to undertake other work due to the fact that it costs more than €10,000 to complete the two-year degree. PME students are people who have already undertaken an undergraduate degree. As such, the idea that they are able to pay more than €10,000 while also paying to live in Dublin, one of the most expensive capitals in the world, for two years is unreasonable. It is therefore impossible for students to complete this degree without also undertaking other jobs.

The Minister for Education needs to consider the lack of permanent contracts. The sad reality is that teachers are often in precarious employment due to a lack of permanent contracts. They are being paid less than teachers recruited before 2011. The Minister is considering the suspension of non-statutory leave arrangements such as career breaks, which will not address this issue in any way and may actually make the problem worse. There is little to encourage teachers to stay in this country as matters stand and the option of non-statutory leave may just well be the one thing keeping many of them from leaving. We have to hold on to the teachers we have. If we do not, the situation will only get worse until we are faced with ongoing school closures.

We also need to address the obstacles facing those who are considering teaching as a profession. We need to fund the PME fully so that people can afford to complete the degree and we need to put emphasis on ongoing professional development, which can be completed online to facilitate rural schools. There are solutions out there for the Minister if she is willing to listen and engage, but that is the problem - there is no listening or engaging.

Deputy Marian Harkin

I thank the Social Democrats for raising this important matter. Unfortunately, it is a daily issue for many families and virtually every school. Highlighting it in the Dáil is important because not every school is prepared to come forward and say that it has trouble sourcing teachers, including substitute teachers. Some schools do not want to admit that children are sometimes being minded instead of being taught. Crucially, what school wants to say that its pupils with special needs are not being supported properly? In this context, I thank the Social Democrats. They have now made it easier for schools to say that they have a problem. Suffering in silence helps no one. Schools know that many of them are facing the same issues, given that principals and teachers speak, but once it is recognised that this is a national problem and is not confined to one or two of them, we will have a better chance of finding solutions.

The Minister has proposed a number of positive suggestions and some of her proposals will make a difference in the short term, but much of it is just tinkering around the edges.

We must examine some structural changes in this regard. The proposals in this motion are what the Minister needs to be considering. They are designed to provide solutions in the medium to long term, with one or two short-term proposals as well.

First, we need permanent, full-time jobs to be given to teachers on their first appointments, if these jobs are available. I do not know what is going on here. Perhaps somebody can explain to me why this is not happening. We desperately need teachers, so why are we driving them away by not offering them the full-time jobs we desperately need to fill? When I started teaching, and that was a long time ago, I got a full-time job on day one and all the people who taught with me also got a full-time job on day one. I do not, therefore, know what is happening here or where this is coming from, but it needs to stop.

How are teachers supposed to plan for a life or try to look at getting a mortgage or whatever it is they wish to do? They just cannot. Having put what I referred to in place, we then need a proper promotional structure. It is not enough just to offer people jobs; we must offer them a career pathway. Young teachers are voting with their feet and going abroad. If they were offered decent employment, and what I mean by this is a full-time job with real promotional prospects, more of them would stay. It would not be all of them, but it would be more of them. As several Deputies said, we need a review of the PME. Significant costs of more than €10,000 are involved, and this is stopping people taking this pathway.

Another practical step that can be taken is to eliminate delays when it comes to the re-registration of teachers with the Teaching Council. This is not rocket science. It is an administrative issue and can be dealt with. With regard to those who have taught abroad outside the EU, I suggest to the Minister for Education that she recognise their years of service if they wish to return here and teach. This would help to attract more teachers back.

Minister of State at the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (Deputy Niall Collins)

I am pleased to respond on behalf of the Government and in support of my colleague, the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, on the topic of teacher supply. Ensuring our children are taught by qualified teachers is a priority issue for the Department of Education and the Government. This morning we have heard about the various measures put in place by the Department and the education partners to address teacher supply. Approximately 3,500 newly qualified teachers have had their registrations finalised by the Teaching Council in 2022 to date. These teachers are an additional source of supply in the current school year. New regulations are in place allowing the registration of third and fourth year undergraduate initial teacher education students with the Teaching Council. Flexible arrangements for teachers job-sharing or on career break have been put in place, along with temporary arrangements for a pension abatement waiver for retired teachers and a capacity to work beyond the full 22-hour teaching time for post-primary teachers.

Teacher supply is a complex issue. My colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, acknowledged earlier that wider societal challenges associated with the cost of living and the availability of housing are affecting the supply of teachers. This is a challenge faced by every sector. The Minister outlined to the House the measures the Government is putting in place to address this situation. She also noted that the starting salary for teachers in Ireland has improved significantly in recent times and that the starting salary here is significantly greater than that in Northern Ireland.

The motion before us makes a wide range of points regarding teacher shortages. It fails, however, to acknowledge the significant work already being done by the Department and the education partners in this area. For example, we now have 450 teachers employed on supply panels, covering sub-vacancies in schools right across the country. These teachers are providing an invaluable service in our classrooms and were not available to schools in these numbers previously. We also have the free programmes for post-primary registered teachers to upskill in subjects where teacher supply is problematic, such as in mathematics, Spanish and physics. This represents a considerable investment by the State. By the end of 2024, approximately 750 teachers should have completed these programmes and registered with the Teaching Council in these subjects. The motion also fails to take account of the fact that there are increasing options for young people to study to be teachers over four years in subjects such as modern foreign languages, Irish, mathematics and computer science. These offer the opportunity to qualify as a teacher in four years and to avoid the time and expense of taking the PME route.

The school system continues to respond well to the constant challenges thrown at it. Having weathered a pandemic, we have, in more recent times, needed to ensure that large numbers of Ukrainian children have access to education. More than 3,500 additional teaching posts have been put into the system in the current year. Despite the actions taken already, the Government accepts that challenges remain and further steps must be implemented. My colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, has outlined to the House further actions being advanced or under consideration. The Government recognises the leadership role the Department of Education plays on this issue. It is also true that the issues of teacher demand and supply require the contribution and co-operation of a broad range of education partners. The Department of Education will continue to work closely and intensively with stakeholders to develop and implement solutions to address the current teacher supply challenges.

Deputy Holly Cairns

Needless to say, the Social Democrats knew this was a crisis and this is why we tabled this motion. Since then, however, in engaging with schools in Cork South-West and beyond, and through receiving messages on social media, I am realising how truly desperate the situation has got. Let us imagine being the principal of a primary school and getting a message late in the evening from a teacher to say they cannot come into work the next day. Let us also imagine that in this scenario it is possible for this teacher to get a sick certificate to cover their absence. That principal would first need to ring the teachers on the substitute panel, and in some places this consists of only two teachers for up to 30 schools, to confirm what will already be known, namely, that, in all likelihood, those teachers will not be available as they are scheduled to work elsewhere. The principal will then have to spend hours ringing around to see if it is possible to find anyone else. Again, this is likely to be a pointless task. One principal described to me the dread they feel every evening at the prospect of a teacher calling in sick because they know they will have to go through pointless hoops and merry-go-rounds to try to find a solution.

What about the situation where the teacher in question cannot get a sick certificate? What if it is necessary for a teacher to miss work because of a family emergency or a bereavement, for example, and not illness? This would mean that a principal would be out of luck and so would the students. In some schools, special education teachers and SNAs are forced to step in to cover the classes, which is a disgrace in itself because, crucially, it takes away precious special education teaching hours from other students. Let us imagine now being a principal in a small rural school, where there is no special education teacher on the staff or perhaps there is only one in a dedicated class. The principal in this case would not only fulfil that role but would also have classes of their own to teach. There may only be three teachers on the staff, including the principal, and one of them cannot come in. What on earth is the principal supposed to do in that situation?

Due to the changes in the substitution rules, there are classes in schools around Ireland being left without any teacher or even basic supervision, potentially for weeks at a time. The people I spoke to in the few schools which were not having issues getting substitute teachers said it was because they had established relationships with substitute teachers in the area who are not on the panel. They told me there is no point in trying to get those people on the panel as they are constantly in demand. Does the Minister of State recognise that teachers need leave for reasons other than illness and that, in those instances, students still need teachers? Does he also recognise that the panels are not sufficient? Another issue that could easily be addressed is that there is no central vetting system for SNAs. Therefore, an SNA must be vetted by each individual school. This makes it unnecessarily hard to get a substitute SNA. One school pointed out to me that there could be a vetting system for SNAs similar to the Teaching Council. That school was down two SNAs that day.

Children with disabilities and special educational needs are being failed by the State every day. First, they have a disgracefully long waiting list to contend with. This is just to get an assessment of needs.

That is before they join the disgracefully long waiting lists for the essential therapies they need. Early intervention is a pipe dream when one is on these waiting lists. Accessible transport is another area where these families are being failed. The list goes on. I could, quite literally, go on all day.

The least that people should be able to expect is a place in a suitable class in a school. That is the bare minimum, and some people do not even get that. Schools in Cork South-West that have been in touch with the National Council for Special Education about this are not even getting a reply. Schools have inquired with a SENO and have not received a reply. One principal described this to me as like sending a message to Pluto. In the meantime, parents are asking schools if there will be a place for their child in September 2023. What are the schools supposed to say to these families?

We have all - I am sure the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, has too - been hearing from distressed parents about the extraordinary knock-on effects of this. To think that the staff allocation to meet the needs of those who manage to get an appropriate place in a class is being taken away because, yet again, the State is failing them is hard to fathom. This has to stop. The only solution we are hearing from the Government during a staff shortage is to make the job less desirable by removing the option of a career break. This is a sad and, quite frankly, worrying indictment of where we are at. It is not surprising because it is the kind of counterproductive approach we have come to expect.

Progressing Disability Services is such a failure that people increasingly do not want to work in the disability sector - a sector that could and should be brilliant and rewarding to work in. The same is starting to happen in teaching. We need to immediately establish an emergency teacher supply task force informed by stakeholders to identify tangible solutions to the shortages, as well as all of the other calls in the Social Democrats motion as outlined by Deputy Gannon.

Deputy Gary Gannon

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I thank all the contributors today, including both Ministers of State.

I have to be honest. It was some stroke, was it not? It was almost a stroke of monumental proportions. Having been contacted by parents, as I am sure everyone in the Chamber has been, and in consultation with schools in all of our communities, we brought forward a motion to deal with the teacher supply crisis in our schools. The motion makes 11 suggestions for how the shortage of teachers could be alleviated to some degree. Following an incorporeal meeting late last night, at which this was not on the agenda, we heard the solution that has come forth from the Government. For valid reasons, no Minister is present here today and no Minister has been made available to answer to the media.

The Government's solution focuses on career breaks. We know it was not even designed to be a solution. It was designed to evade, to dilute the narrative and to put the spotlight back onto teachers, as if somehow they are being duplicitous for having the audacity to take a career break. In some instances, people take career breaks to look after their families or, heaven forbid, to go off to earn the rent that they cannot afford in cities around Ireland. It was incredible. I should not be surprised but even I was shocked, as, indeed, were the schools which have contacted all of us over the past 12 hours. It is monumental. Rather than talking about salaries, conditions, terms of pay or the PME, they talk about career breaks. No Minister stood forward here today. No Government representative came in to admit that given that we are understaffed in our schools, this measure, which has captured attention, will bring not one teacher back into the system over the next two months. It will do nothing to address the shortages of staff in our schools. It is incredible.

The Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, shocked me even further in her response. We highlighted the fact that in 83% of schools, as a last resort, principals have had to redeploy special education teachers to mainstream classes to plug the gaps. In her response, the Minister of State spoke about "banked SET hours". Her prepared script continued:

The importance in providing regular and structured support on a weekly basis to students with special education needs is crucial to their educational development ...

Who is she telling? More importantly, what is she doing about it? I appreciate that the Minister of State said it is an issue but she did not say what the solution is and what the Department will do about it. The Minister of State referenced something that was not even contained within our motion. It is incredible.

We are here today talking about a shortage of staff in our schools that is having consequences for the everyday learning experience of children and young people the length and breadth of Ireland. We could be applying the exact same standard to any one of our essential front-line public services. We could have been talking about nurses having to leave because they cannot afford the rent. We could be talking about gardaí because they cannot afford the rent either. The crisis across our public services is not a result of global factors. It is not a result of the pandemic. It is a result of successive centre-right Governments in this country which have broken the social contract and the responsibility for that lies squarely at the Government's door.

We implore the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, as a representative of the Government sitting here today - I appreciate he is here by himself - to take action, give this the recognition it deserves, get together and decide how we can keep our schools open and flourishing, and how we can diversify the type of people who can access the profession. Something must be done. Sitting here, muddying the waters, doing what we always do and saying that it is not the Government's fault - it is about those pesky teachers taking career breaks - is ludicrous and shameful. It is a sad reflection on this Government. There is no accountability and there are no solutions. They are scrambling for ideas at the last minute and offering nothing but blame. It is scandalous. The Social Democrats will not stand for it and that is why we brought this motion to the Dáil today.

Question put and agreed to.

Cuireadh an Dáil ar fionraí ar 11.56 a.m. agus cuireadh tús leis arís ar 12.02 p.m.

Sitting suspended at 11.56 a.m. and resumed at 12.02 p.m.