The Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, ensured there was funding within the budget for the employment of teachers and SNAs. Without a viable career structure, however, teaching careers will remain unattractive and the supply crisis will continue. The teacher recruitment crisis is a direct result of attempts to make the education system do more with less. A Teachers Union of Ireland survey highlighted that only 13% of teachers receive a permanent contract on initial appointment and only 31% of teachers recruited since 2011 got full hours in their first year of teaching. This means 87% have to make do with part-time work as a direct result of the lack of full-time contracts offered and have no creditworthiness to obtain a mortgage. Schools are being forced to use unqualified teachers, to divert resources away from students with special educational needs and to drop subjects from the curriculum.

At a time when we are crying out for teachers, the remedy is simple. I ask the Taoiseach to provide the relevant funding and put in place the relevant actions to ensure new teachers or those we want to bring home are offered full-time jobs with full-time salaries. Teachers are leaving the country and emigrating. They cannot get mortgages and they face issues relating to the lack of housing and the cost of living. Please give the teachers what they want.

It is important to say as a point of context that we have more teachers in Ireland and working in Ireland than ever before.

The pupil-teacher ratio is lower than it was in the past. We are having at least some success recruiting and retaining teachers but there is a real challenge as well. We are in a period of full employment and a period of very fierce international competition for talent. This is true in the public sector and the private sector. It is true for well-paid jobs and for poorly paid jobs. I do not know anyone who is not struggling at present to recruit and retain staff for this reason. It is not as simple as saying that putting up pay necessarily solves the problem because other people will then put up pay also and they are still competing for a scarce resource and scarce talent. We have a pay deal with teachers. They ratified that pay agreement. We are implementing it. It involves improvements to pay, conditions and allowances. I expect that during the summer, and certainly before October, we will begin the process of engagement with the public sector unions, including the teachers' unions, on the next deal.