The Tánaiste comes from a teaching background. I stood last week with the adult education teachers and tutors in south Tipperary who are campaigning for parity of esteem with their teaching colleagues. Many of them have teaching qualifications. They do tremendous work with adult literacy and with adult education in bringing people back into education schemes. They go down as tutors sometimes in order to make it easy for the students, the daltaí, to come back in to learn and re-engage with the education system. However, the tutors are not being treated fairly and are not getting parity of esteem with their colleagues teaching across our schools. It is time that this was recognised. I cannot speak highly enough of the work these people do, which is so vital, when people can be left behind, fall off the system and fall through the cracks. They re-engage with people, bring them on and nurture them. They do tremendous work with adult literacy and so on. It is so badly needed. They need to be treated with respect by the Department and get parity of esteem and equal pay.

I accept the Deputy's general view with regard to the value and importance of adult education, and in particular adult tutors within the education and training boards, ETBs, and the adult education sector. The Deputy will be aware there has been an ongoing issue and a campaign around this but it is within an industrial relations framework. Various offers have been made and various hearings have been heard. We would like to see this accelerated as quickly as we possibly can to get a resolution to these issues to respect and reflect the contribution that adult tutors make to adult education and to education in general.