Apologies have been received from Deputy Shónagh Ní Raghallaigh and Senator Gareth Scahill.

All are welcome. I ask anyone attending remotely to mute themselves when not contributing in order that we do not pick up any background noise or feedback. As usual, I remind all those in attendance to ensure their mobile phones are either on silent mode or switched off entirely.

Members attending remotely are reminded of the constitutional requirement that in order to participate in public meetings, they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex.

Witnesses within the precincts of Leinster House are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the presentations they make to this committee. This means they have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything they say at the meeting. However, they are expected not to abuse this privilege, and it is my duty as Cathaoirleach to ensure that this privilege is not abused. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative they comply with any such direction.

Members are also reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person or entity outside of the Houses, or an official, either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

On today's agenda is the recruitment and retention of teachers to alleviate shortages in supply. I warmly welcome the following officials from the Department of Education and Youth: Ms Aoife Conduit, assistant secretary general; Mr. Seamus Keating, principal officer; Ms Noreen Finnegan, principal officer; Mr. Paul Alexander, senior statistician, principal officer; Ms Clare Connolly, assistant principal officer; and Ms Deirdre Dalton, assistant principal officer.

I call on Ms Conduit to make an opening statement. She has five minutes, after which we will have questions from members of the committee.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members of the committee for the invitation to appear before them today. I welcome the opportunity to discuss the Department’s work on teacher recruitment and supply, a matter that goes to the heart of our education system and the experience of every child in our schools.

The Department’s overarching priority is clear: to ensure that every child has access to a qualified, committed teacher and a positive school experience. This is fundamental to delivering high-quality education and supporting the ambitions of our learners. In recent years, we have made significant progress in strengthening the teaching workforce. Teacher numbers are now at a record high, with over 79,000 teachers employed across primary and post-primary schools as of March 2025. More than 97% of allocated posts are filled, which is a strong indicator of system resilience. Over 99% of instruction is provided by registered teachers, reflecting a focus to ensure that every child receives a quality education.

Since 2018, we have created 11,752 additional teaching posts, including substantial investment in special education provision. Budget 2026 builds on this progress, providing for 1,042 new posts, of which 860 are dedicated to special educational needs settings. These figures reflect a sustained commitment to meeting the needs of a growing and diverse student population.

Despite these achievements, challenges remain. Certain schools, particularly those in urban areas, Irish-medium settings and those requiring special education teachers, continue to experience difficulties in filling posts. At post-primary level, recruitment for subject-specific roles, especially in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, STEM, subjects and technology suite subjects, is an ongoing concern. While retirements and resignations remain low, less than 3% annually, short-term vacancies and substitute cover present operational challenges for school leaders. These issues are not unique to Ireland; they mirror trends internationally. Indeed, Ireland is seen by international organisations as having a robust and high quality supply of teachers. However, they require a proactive and multifaceted response to ensure that our system remains resilient and that teaching continues to attract talented individuals.

The Department has introduced a comprehensive suite of measures to address these challenges. These include financial supports and incentives. We have launched targeted bursaries to attract and retain teachers in high-demand areas. A €2,000 bursary is now available for student teachers in STEM fields, linked to a two-year teaching commitment. Similarly, a €2,000 bursary for professional master of education, PME, graduates was provided in the previous school year and the effect of this scheme is being evaluated.

We have expanded upskilling programmes to reduce out-of-field teaching and support teachers in high-demand subjects. New programmes in Irish, French, politics and society, and computer science commenced in 2025, complementing existing courses in maths, physics and Spanish. Over 160 teachers have registered for these new programmes and a further 518 have completed existing programmes, which are all offered free of charge.

The Teaching Transforms campaign continues to promote teaching as an attractive and rewarding profession. This campaign uses digital, radio and video media, and is supported by a dedicated webpage. Salaries remain competitive, starting at €44,879 for primary and €46,448 for post-primary teachers, rising to €85,000 under the current pay deal. These measures have already delivered results. The number of student teachers graduating has increased by 20% since 2018, and demand for initial teacher education remains strong, with over 3,600 newly qualified teachers registering with the Teaching Council in 2025. More than 127,000 teachers, a 34% increase, are now on the register.

While immediate interventions are essential, long-term planning is critical. The Department is developing Ireland’s first strategic school workforce plan, with work being done by UNESCO and the EU Commission forming part of this. The plan will provide a strategic framework for the workforce over the next decade and will be part of a wider education strategy, known as our schools, our future. The objectives of this plan will include forecasting future demand based on demographic trends and curriculum reform, enhancing diversity in the profession, addressing subject-specific shortages and maintaining competitiveness in pay and conditions to ensure teaching remains an attractive career.

The workforce plan will be delivered in phases. An action group on workforce planning is already operational. Comprehensive recommendations will be presented by 2028, following extensive stakeholder engagement. This work aligns with the programme for Government commitment to secure Ireland's educational future and ensure that our teaching workforce meets the needs of learners, society and the economy.

While recruitment and retention challenges persist, the Department is taking decisive action by combining immediate interventions with strategic planning to ensure that every child continues to benefit from a high-quality education delivered by a well-supported teaching workforce. I look forward to engaging with the committee on these measures and hearing members' views.

I thank Ms Conduit. We will now go to members' questions. There are six minutes per member. I ask members to leave adequate time for responses. They might occasionally hear me tapping on my glass to encourage them to stay within the time limits. We will probably have a second round of questions. We will begin with Senator Joe Conway.

I welcome the witnesses from the Department. It is great to have the chance to tease out this question, which has, in the past ten years, been an intractable problem. I come from a background of primary school teaching. I was a principal in Dunmore East, County Waterford, for 19 years. I taught in a variety of locations, including Dublin, Longford and Waterford. My overall view of the school and classroom situation is probably somewhat passé because it was a different society when I was teaching until 2005. In the past 20 years, the situation in primary schools, which I would know best, has become immensely complex. I am conscious that I am running down my time talking about myself. I ask the witnesses to bear with me.

Many of the problems in teacher retention are beyond the system. They are not fundamentally problems of the Department's or management's making. They are societal problems. The cost of living, and particularly the cost of housing, are making teaching not the attractive job it once was. I bought my first house in 1980 when my annual salary was £5,700. Interest rates were 15% at that stage. I paid almost exactly half of my salary in mortgage repayments. Owning a house as a teacher was never easy. That was 45 years ago. The problem now is that teaching is such an all-engrossing and pressurised profession. I have been going around classrooms for the past 20 years with two of the teacher training colleges. I see the problems that they undergo, with induction, trying to get into the system and dealing with the tsunami of policies that come down the road. I know we have induction supports for teachers, but they need professional support from the system throughout their careers, not just from the school team or principal. The principal, for teachers in the classroom, is often more of a hindrance than a help. I can say that as an ex-principal. I have come across some right kookies who were principals in my time and they did not make your job any easier. Has the Department ever addressed the idea of ongoing, career-long support for teachers as they bed into the profession? Looking at it, I would say there is quite an attrition rate for young teachers. I would say that many of them, like gardaí, are lost in the first ten years of their service. Sin mo cheannsa.

I thank the Senator for the question. The system has probably changed since he was a principal.

We have 200,000 additional children in the system since then and 38,000 of them have come into the system since 2020. There has been a huge demographic change. We agree that the teaching environment has become more challenging. In terms of teachers' professional learning, it is correct that we are trying to address this at a number of stages, first in initial teacher education. There have been huge changes in initial teacher education. There is a new standards framework that is now being reviewed and a new induction system, Droichead, was introduced along with Cosán, which is a framework for teachers' professional learning throughout their careers. They are all measures we are looking at on how to help and support teachers from the beginning of their professional journey right through their professional formation.

In terms of ongoing professional learning, we have merged a number of organisations to form Oide, which is now up and running. It is developing and working with the education centres into being, not quite a one-stop shop for teachers' professional learning, but that would be the ultimate aim. It has a comprehensive range of programmes being delivered to teachers.

I apologise for cutting across, but I am close on time. Does Ms Conduit think the education centres around the country are doing enough in this regard to support teachers throughout their careers? The adjunct of that is what she thinks they might do to improve their game.

Teachers take a lot of responsibility for their own professional learning and that is correct in terms of their professional development. There is a huge amount of activity in that area and teachers are accessing large numbers of programmes. They are choosing programmes that help them with what they are facing every day in their classrooms. We see professional learning programmes being offered by both the National Council for Special Education, which would be more targeted at teachers working in special classes and special schools, but also other aspects like managing the diversity of children in the classroom, differentiated teaching and all of that. I agree there is always room for improvement. As Oide continues to bed in and to develop its strategic plan, and as that is rolled out over a number of years there will be an ongoing improvement in access to high-quality teacher professional learning opportunities for all our teachers.

I have no further questions. I have a Commencement matter in the Seanad, so excuse me in advance.

This is something close to my heart and which I have been campaigning on for a number of years. When I was out of the Dáil last time I went back into teaching, but I could see the impact on my child as well. I wonder if there is a bit of gaslighting by the Department in the figures. I expect it from the Government parties. They have been doing it for a long time and pretending there is no teacher shortage. They will not acknowledge there is a crisis in this. In the figure given here for primary schools, the Department states that analysis of the teacher payroll shows 3.1% of primary allocations unused and 1.8% of allocations in post-primary unutilised. Yet the ASTI, which is the biggest secondary teachers union has published data, and I know the TUI has as well, saying that 75% of second-level schools have had no applications for vacancies. Half of secondary schools had unfilled vacancies and 81% of principals admitted they had to employ unqualified teachers in different subjects. That is at second level. I have had two emails in the past couple of days from constituents which I will briefly read. Just to say that there is not a problem or that it is not as much of a problem is, I think, incorrect.

One parent contacted me in relation to Luttrellstown Community College to say that construction studies had been disbanded. Their son was hoping to do construction studies, wants to be a carpenter and is now gutted that it has been disbanded. It is due to the fact that somebody retired or left who was commuting for two hours. Why was that person commuting for two hours? We all know why. It was because they cannot afford the rents or mortgage payments in Dublin. Another one is from a teacher and a parent stating that two local secondary schools have had to disband subjects in Dublin West as well. I know we had the whole issue of Coolmine Community School that we were highlighting a few years ago that dropped construction studies as well. They are practical subjects, but every single subject has a shortage. There was a detailed survey done on this. There is a shortage even in English, and a shortage in languages, including Irish. It is impossible to find an Irish teacher. It is so many subjects. It has all been grossly euphemised by the Department.

There are two specific things I want to ask about and those are solutions. The Department talks about a Dublin allowance. I put forward the idea of a city allowance because I agree it is not just Dublin. It is Wicklow, Kildare, Galway and Cork in that order after Dublin. There is probably Meath as well. I do not accept the arguments against a city or Dublin allowance, which the unions are making too. There is an island allowance, a Gaeltacht allowance and all sorts of different allowances in teaching. The idea that everybody gets the same is just not true. Unless we offer people more money, they will not be able to teach. Working-class areas and urban areas will obviously suffer the most. To say a Dublin allowance would not be effective because not every school is affected does not make any sense. I am sure not every single person equally needs the London weighting allowance but it is there to attract workers in essential professions.

My last point is about if the Department thinks it should be doing more. I know in the UK they have introduced the equivalent of the average industrial wage for people to become student teachers. You get paid more for subjects in short supply like physics, science and chemistry. What is the Irish Government doing? Nothing. I personally know two young people going to study in the UK. It is likely they will stay teaching there. I know these are political decisions, but civil servants should also be coming up with ideas and saying to the Government that it needs to do this. People are going to Australia to teach because the incentives they have introduced are incredible. They have hard-to-fill vacancy allowances that are quite large, and the UK is the same. It is attracting lots of young people from here. I see no solutions coming forward and I find it depressing because I know so many, including my own child, who are affected by this because of the lack of action.

We acknowledge that there is a problem and that there are challenges. It is important to say that. Those figures-----

Does Ms Conduit acknowledge it is chronic? The ASTI says it is chronic.

The figures that were given in that 3% of unfilled allocated posts is a national picture. We understand it is a much more complex and nuanced picture than that. There are shortages as I said in my opening statement in some subjects in certain areas. That is why we need a more targeted approach to do that. On a Dublin or city allowance, those matters of public service pay are agreed at central government level. They would have knock-on effects across every sector. I do not think I can comment on that.

Have the civil servants been asked to do any scoping inquiry, report or investigation into any of the things being done in other countries that might be tried here?

In terms of the Department of education and our remit and responsibilities, we are working on a TSI-funded European Union Commission project. UNESCO is conducting that for us and part of that project is looking at factors affecting teacher supply right across the world and what measures are being put in place. That is part of that study. We are looking at international models and what happens.

Does Ms Conduit think there is enough urgency about this?

I think there is. It is something we have been working hard on for a number of years. There have been improvements, but there is more work to be done.

Nothing is actually being introduced.

There will be a second round of questions. I am next up on the roster of speakers. I thank the witnesses for being here. I have quite a few questions to get through. What analysis does the Department of education keep in terms of teachers who qualify in the Irish training colleges and who are overseas? Are there figures on those who graduated and immediately went overseas for employment at the moment?

We have some figures. I ask Mr. Keating to come in on that.

Yes. We undertook research with the Teaching Council and analysed the Teaching Council register in 2018. We presented this data yesterday and a report was published yesterday. In 2023, there were 118,000 registered teachers with the Teaching Council. Of those, there were 4,600 who were maintaining their registration with the council but were not economically active in the State. We can deduce or infer from that those teachers are abroad. What we see from additional analysis of that cohort that was taken in November 2023 is that those teachers return over time. We intend to take undertake further analysis of our newly qualified teachers to understand if they work in the State on their graduation or if they go abroad and return and what their patterns are. We understand that across all graduate cohorts in society there are changing trends in terms of employment. There is a general desire to want to work abroad for some time.

I accept that there is a political policy thing here to be worked on. I do not know if that is the most accurate metric. I am a teacher and went to Mary Immaculate College. There is always a certain cohort intending on going overseas. That is what young people do. We want to get them back get as quickly as we can. We want them in Irish schools, but they do not all register with the Teaching Council to begin with if they are expecting to be going overseas immediately. The Department needs to marry up the figures for the bachelor of education, arts and teaching qualifications. I believe there is a net figure there that is somewhat different to the 4,600.

We have introduced a new route for student teachers to register with the Teaching Council. Third and fourth year students in their bachelor of education can register to allow them to substitute. We probably do have more accurate figures in terms of the numbers on the council. Another study that was launched yesterday was on teachers' professional journeys. That is a longitudinal study on newly-qualified graduates and their experiences, influences and intentions. That will look at graduates from 2019, 2022 and 2026 and follow them out to 2030 to get a more qualitative nuanced view of newly-qualified teachers and how they see themselves and their career developing.

In the previous Dáil, I sat very often in this committee room as part of the health committee. The witnesses' opposite numbers of the health committee would have sat here and we would have similar conversation about how we get doctors and nurses back to Ireland. They used to talk about various campaigns they used to run in Australia, Canada and other jurisdictions to try to bring back those Irish qualified health staff back here. Has the Department of education any plans to reach out to entice back Irish qualified teachers to work here again?

A number of years ago we introduced Turas Abhaile. It is a way for teachers who are teaching abroad to see what posts are available in Ireland and to have that in a comprehensive and accessible way. We offer incremental credit under particular circumstances for eligible teachers who are returning from abroad. The incremental credit scheme, certainly for primary teachers, is one of the most generous. You do not see in any other public sector. We offer incentives for people to come home and have done for a number of years. As my colleague said, it is a cultural thing as well. As the Cathaoirleach has acknowledged, it is part of their journey.

I am conscious of time. The secondary school unions have told us in the past that they have major concerns about the number of teachers teaching or covering class levels and subjects beyond their qualified expertise. Will the witnesses comment on that? Particularly in exam classes in third year and sixth year, to what extent is that prevalent? Should that be of concern to us as the education committee, given that particularly in rural schools, where they cannot fill these posts, there is somebody teaching beyond their qualified area and preparing a class for an exam in an area that through the college system they are not qualified to teach?

We do look at out-of-field teaching and it is a concern for us. In mitigation, principals who are responsible for deploying the teachers within their schools often will deploy teachers with cognate qualifications. For example, they might have somebody who is a science teacher who may take a maths class where they would have had a high content of maths. The upskilling programmes we have introduced were developed to address that problem. Teachers who are teaching in subjects who were not necessarily registered with the Teaching Council to teach can do these programmes. They are then fully registered to teach and fully qualified to teach those in schools as well. I mentioned those in my opening statement, but they-----

Are there figures on how prevalent this is, particularly in terms of the examination classes going into exams next June?

I ask Dr. Alexander to come in on this.

Is there a figure we can put on how many leaving and junior certificate programmes are being taught out of field?

What we collect every two years is a measure of how many out-of-field teachers have been deployed. We do not have information on where they are being deployed. Again, that would be a matter from the principals. The evidence from DCU suggests that it is worse to put them in first year, second year and the transition years when they are coming in from primary to post-primary. That has worse effect and there is international evidence there. It is a matter for the principals to decide if and when they deploy people out of field.

I will come in again later. Next up is Deputy Cummins.

I thank the witnesses for coming in. It is interesting to hear what they have to say and to listen to other questions that have been asked. To drill down a little bit, I am a little bit confused about the data that Dr. Alexander gave. I know he is the statistician for it. I understand that when the ASTI or Irish National Teachers Organisation, INTO, collect data, that may be skewed in terms of the numbers they get because of the people who reply to that. I still find it difficult that what I am hearing on the ground is that there are huge difficulties recruiting at primary and post-primary level. Why is that data not matching? One set of data has to be incorrect. If we are not seeing it correctly, how can we fix it and address it? I am concerned as to why there is such a difference between different data.

Regarding teacher stress, I am aware from working in schools over the past number of years that there is a significant rise in the level of stress that principals and teachers are under and teachers. There are teachers who have become principals and then have said, "No, thank you" and have returned to teaching instead of continuing in a leadership role as a principal. How can they be supported?

On initial teacher education, Ms Conduit stated that third and fourth year students in initial teacher training education are able to register with the Teaching Council to substitute. I taught on one of those courses in DCU. I am concerned as to a student who has a 39-hour week, depending on what year it is, will fit that course work in and teach at the same time. That is a lot. They are under huge pressure, particularly in the professional master of education, PME, course because it is so expensive to do it. I am delighted to see that the €2,000 bursary but that course costs many multiples of that to do it. Allowing student teachers to teach because we have a shortage is fantastic from that perspective but from the learners' perspective, that puts them under huge strain. How are they going to do the work? It is 39 hours and then all the course work that goes with all those 39 hours of learning is quite a lot. To that point and I have mentioned it several times in this committee and the further and higher education committee, I would love to see some sort of level of an apprenticeship model for teaching where there is a taught element and practical element where there is a payment that comes with that. That creates a huge difficulty as to who pays them and how does all that work but that would go a long way to elevating a lot of things that we are talking about today.

On registering with teachers from abroad, a number of people have contacted me who have been teaching abroad but are unable to register with the Teaching Council or are able to teach for a certain period of time but then do not reach the criteria afterwards.

I would love to see that process made clearer for people because it is causing difficulty. People who have been teaching elsewhere are unable to teach when they come here.

Regarding the incremental credit for returning teachers, my understanding is that a lot of young people who go abroad to teach have a huge ability to move very quickly into middle management but that is not recognised here when they return. If I am incorrect in that, I ask the witnesses to let me know. My understanding is that such progression is not recognised and they go back to the bottom of the scale. Regardless of what experience they gained elsewhere, they must start over again. If that is incorrect, I would be happy to be told so.

In terms of the statistics, we are looking at administrative data in the main. We pay all teachers, so we have centralised payroll data and we do all the allocations. Those statistics are correct but, as I said, they are at a national level and that may be masking complexities in particular areas and particular schools. We are not saying there is no problem or challenge there. The figure of 3% refers to 3% of more than 80,000 posts, which is not insignificant.

In terms of burnout, we acknowledge that life has become more stressful in society and in schools. We have an occupational health service for teachers. We also have Spectrum.Life, an employee assistance service, which provides a suite of supports for teachers right up to one-to-one counselling sessions, in recognition that teachers are under stress they cannot manage. We know from Spectrum.Life's anonymised annual reports that a lot of the stresses teachers are feeling come from other areas of their life as well, not necessarily just from the classroom.

Regarding teaching abroad and the incremental credit, a primary teacher can teach for up to seven years abroad in state schools or schools offering the national curriculum, either inside or outside the EU, and get incremental credit for those seven years.

If they teach in private schools, is that time not counted?

It is for primary teachers, provided the school offers a state-recognised curriculum. It is a little more nuanced in the post-primary sector. There is nothing comparable to the incremental credit scheme for other public sector professions.

I also asked about teachers registering with the Teaching Council from abroad and third- and fourth-year students registering with the council for substitute work.

I agree with the Deputy that the student registration issue is something we need to look at. It is a fairly recent development that teachers registered with the Teaching Council are student teachers. Some student teachers report they get great benefit and experience from that substitute work and that they are really learning on the job. However, I acknowledge that combining the two can or could be problematic. It is something we need to look at more closely. As part of our new workforce development work, we will look at different ways to enter the profession and different types of qualifications. That is something we have an interest in and we will be looking at international models.

I can get back to the Deputy bilaterally on the issue of Teaching Council registration from abroad.

On the longitudinal research study that is in the pipeline, why is it running until 2030? Why must we wait that long for the results?

The study is running until 2030 but there already have been two reports from it and there will be interim reports as it progresses. It is the nature of longitudinal studies that they track people over a period but that is not to say there will be no output from the study along the way. It is being undertaken by Professor Paul Conway at the University of Limerick, UL, Professor Emer Smyth of the ESRI and Professor Aisling Leavy at Mary Immaculate College. It is a really interesting study and we can send the Senator further details on it.

The Department is taking data as time elapses between now and 2030. Is it using that data to change practice right now? Will there be changes we can tangibly see in the system right now and over the next few years before 2030?

Yes, absolutely, and it will feed into the workforce development plan. It will be a really rich source of tangible data for us about teachers' actual experiences and graduates' actual experiences as they leave college and go into the workforce.

That is welcome. It is good there will be consultation with teachers, who are the people delivering the education system, about their experiences.

What is being done right now to reduce the student-teacher ratio, which is one of the highest in Europe? I was a secondary school Irish teacher. I went home with 30 essays on a Friday evening and worked all weekend to return them on the Monday with prompt feedback, which is best practice as per the initial teacher training I did. Does Ms Conduit agree that teachers' workload at present is completely unsustainable?

Teacher workload is something that has come to our attention. A post-primary group will be set up to look at teacher workload, arising out of-----

Does Ms Conduit consider the workload to be sustainable right now? As we speak, there are teachers of Irish and secondary school teachers generally in classrooms all over the country. Is their workload sustainable throughout the school year? Everybody makes the joke about the three months they get off in the summer but for the nine months they are in school, does Ms Conduit think their workload is sustainable at present?

We have done a considerable amount of work on reducing class sizes. Provision was made to reduce the pupil-teacher ratio in three budgets in a row and it is now the lowest it has ever been. The programme for Government acknowledges there is more work to be done in that area. Teachers need to be supported in managing their workload and there are a lot of supports going in to do that.

I was a secondary school teacher but let us look at primary level. I have a brother teaching in Dubai. We are losing teachers abroad for various reasons. Some people like to travel and we are losing some for other reasons. Ms Conduit indicated that the incremental credit is given to returning teachers in very specific circumstances. What are those specific circumstances?

Teachers can get up to seven years of incremental credit. They can teach in a school in the EU or outside it. They can teach in a state-run school or a private school where the curriculum is recognised by that state.

The credit is given so long as Ireland recognises the curriculum in the state where they are teaching.

No, it applies where the school curriculum is recognised by the state in which the person is teaching.

Is Ms Conduit referring to recognition of our curriculum?

No, I refer to the curriculum they have been teaching while abroad. I can send the Senator details on this from the relevant circular.

Is it an easy process for teachers to go through? Can they come home and feel Ireland wants them back and is providing an easy pathway to access the incremental credit and enable them to return to teaching here?

When teachers come back, they have to go into employment and then apply for the incremental credit. Obviously, there is an application process and a process to assess whether they are eligible under the scheme.

Is teacher pay an issue in attracting people into the profession? If we take the STEM sector and the number of really highly qualified graduates we produce, is teaching an attractive enough profession for those graduates to reskill to enter?

There have been huge improvements in teachers' pay over the last number of public pay agreements. It is approximately €45,000 for a newly qualified graduate, which is a competitive salary compared with the situation for other graduates. It is not going to compete with every profession or every job but the pay certainly has been bolstered in recent years.

I welcome the longitudinal study in one way but, right now, we have a crisis in attracting Irish-language teachers into the system, whether in Gaelscoileanna at primary level or, as in my case, as secondary school Irish teachers. I spent ten or 11 years teaching the Irish language in one capacity or another. I was losing the will to live trying to teach a curriculum that is so out of date. Is the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA, doing enough to bring in speedy reform, considering it started a process in 2021 and we are now almost in 2026? Can the Department intervene to try to speed up the process by which the NCCA delivers reform of the education system such that I could go into a classroom again and enjoy teaching the curriculum?

The NCCA is doing ongoing work on curriculum reform and there has been huge reform in recent years. The junior cycle framework was introduced in 2016 and a new primary curriculum framework was introduced last year. It is important that the NCCA bases new curriculums on the latest research and in consultation with all stakeholders.

It started a process five years ago and then lost the room very quickly by implementing a reduction in marks.

The Department should be overseeing that and bringing in stringent oversight of the NCCA when it is clearly going against the wishes of the vast majority of teachers and students.

The NCCA is ultimately accountable to the Minister. It is a statutory agency with an expert council. We entrust this work to them because they are the experts in developing that work.

Are the officials happy with what they are doing?

We are out of time. The last few points are very relevant questions. The Irish language is a big factor in this room. The NCCA will have to come in at some point on a different matter.

Just to clarify, retention of Irish-language teachers in the Irish-language classroom is in crisis and it is because of the system overseen by the Department, in one capacity or another, and implemented by the NCCA. It is a relevant question in this room and I know they will come back in and answer themselves, but it is relevant in this particular context as well.

I fully appreciate that and agree fully. In terms of that vertical structure, the Department and the NCCA both answer to the Minister. The NCCA would not be answering to the Department. The questions are very relevant and I fully agree with all the Senator's sentiments. We do need to get answers and we need to get the NCCA in here at some point. A lot of this is down to curriculum, even for those who cannot come back and teach, because they may have trained in the United States or Britain. There is a lot to be worked on but I agree with the Senator.

Apologies that I could not be here earlier. I read the opening statements and thank the officials for coming in. I know a lot of teachers in both secondary and primary school. I was really surprised by the numbers, that retention is so high and that so few are lost. Between the media and talking to teachers, it sounds like a much worse situation than what the Department has stated. Following on from Senator Curley's points on salary, is it correct that the salary for primary school teaching is starting at €45,000? Yes. And for secondary school?

It is just over €46,000.

I had a look at some other countries in Europe. The cost of living would be one of the highest here compared with our fellow European countries. In the Netherlands it is around €55,000. In France it is about €50,000. In Germany, it is between €40,000 and €60,000. In the UK it is between £29,000 and £47,000. With the extra cost of living here, removing Dublin from it because I read what was said about Dublin, but nationally, do we need to be looking for better wages considering the higher cost of living here compared to our European counterparts?

Just to say that there has been an increase in wages to take account of cost-of-living factors and other things, particularly over the period of the last public pay agreement, which saw a raise in pay of more than 9% and then other local bargaining and all of that.

That is welcome but for two primary school teachers living together - and a lot of teachers seem to marry each other - it is very hard to get a mortgage earning €90,000. Is it sustainable to be able to live properly?

All I can say is that public service pay is agreed centrally between the Department of public expenditure and reform and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. The pay agreement runs out in June 2026. They will be entering talks on new pay agreements. That is a forum where trade unions will be making their case and the Government will take a view, and those negotiations will go forward.

On primary schools, I heard from a teacher the other day who is in a two-teacher school and there is nobody there to help with the hot school meals, so the teachers take it in turns to get the meals ready. On mental well-being as well, we are trying to teach children in their own way as much as possible when there are lots of different needs now in classrooms. In another school I know extremely well, the teachers end up co-ordinating the 21 buses outside arriving in the morning. There seems to be a lot more asked of teachers now. Is that hindering retention or are teachers working with it and amenable to it all? Could they be given more for it? It seems like the role has expanded a lot.

I cannot really speak to the role expanding. There are a number of demands on teachers.

A lot of demands, that is what I am saying.

We do provide schools with funding for ancillary staff. The Senator is probably aware that we recently provided for secretarial support and we pay them through our payroll. That is ongoing. In terms of retention, as we said, fewer than 3% resign or retire each year. That is factual administrative----

The 97% must be very much enjoying it.

That is the data. We have the second highest retention rate in the teaching profession in the OECD. We do have a high retention rate of teachers. Sometimes there is a narrative but I think lots of teachers do enjoy their jobs, actually. It is a fulfilling profession.

There is a just a narrative that seems to be a lot more negative than what we are seeing, absolutely. Would Ms Conduit agree there definitely is a more negative narrative out there?

The UNESCO work is very interesting. They are looking at administrative data but also doing a lot of surveys, talking to teachers and stakeholders and assessing the perception. It is a different kind of analysis, looking at how people perceive the profession, as opposed to what the data may be telling us. I think the media narrative and other narratives feed into that.

I am nearly 30 years out of college and I would have perceived it as being a fabulous career to have. There seems to be a lot of negative narrative at the moment. Going back to salary, to reach that €85,000 level, is that for a vice principal or principal or is it a matter of years of service?

That is years of service. That would be the top of the scale. There would be posts of responsibility with additional pay accruing. One in three primary school teachers now have a post of responsibility with an additional allowance.

I apologise for being late into the room but I had been listening online and heard the opening statements. I would like to start on pupil-teacher ratios. We have the highest in the EU at the moment at 1:23, acknowledging that it was brought down in a number of budgets during the lifetime of the last Government. The EU average is 1:19. Our programme for Government commitment, which I have signed up to as a Government-supporting TD, is to aim to reduce the general pupil-teacher ratio at primary level to 1:19 over the lifetime of this Government. There are four budgets left in the lifetime of this Government and we have four numbers to get down there. Clearly I was good at maths in school at least. That means one a year if we are going to do it incrementally. Today we are talking about teacher shortages and the crisis facing some parts of the country. How many additional teachers would be needed next year to reduce the ratio by one? Do we know what that would cost? Are there compound impacts of that, since we already have shortages in some parts of the country?

I do not have those figures to hand for the actual cost but we have worked out those figures as we have reduced the classroom sizes year on year. It is important to say that the pupil-teacher ratio in Ireland is 12.8:1. That is accounting for all of the teachers in the system and the numbers of children. The 23:1 and the 19:1 is actually class size, the number of children in a classroom and the teacher teaching them. That is reflective-----

When I visit a lot of rural classrooms across my constituency, I go in to a teacher who has close to 30 in the classroom. While I appreciate that is balanced over a school it does not discount the fact that sometimes, a classroom is not big enough for the number of children who are in it but the teacher is trying to manage 30 children in that room. We discussed school buildings here recently. Maybe there are fewer than 20 children in the room next door but that teacher is still facing 30 for that year.

That is right and schools have that autonomy to deploy the teachers within their school. They may feel it is more advantageous to have a smaller infant class, for example, when younger children are coming in and more children might go into another class. That is done at school level. We can talk about national averages and bringing those down. We have been bringing them down. The average class size has gone from 24.9 to 22.2 over the last number of years since 2020. It is reducing.

As the Deputy noted, the programme for Government commitment is to reduce it further. It is important to acknowledge that we have, in parallel, put in a huge amount of other teaching posts into schools, particularly in the special educational needs area but also others such as English as an additional language, other resource teachers and home-school community liaison posts in DEIS schools. A lot of teachers and teaching posts have gone into schools in comparison to the past. That is something that has happened in parallel with just looking at the class sizes too. It is important to acknowledge that.

On my question of how much it would cost to reduce it by one, I appreciate that Ms Conduit said she does not have those figures with her today but the Department does therefore if she would share them with me that would be a big help.

Yes, of course.

In the last budget, we were looking at capitation grants and pupil-teacher ratios and it probably was not possible to do two. What was done on funding towards the schools was a big help, particularly at primary level, with the uplift we saw there. However, the pupil-teacher ratio remains an issue for all of the principals I am talking to so I would like to see where we are going to go as a Government over the next four years. It is extremely important that we meet that commitment of reducing the pupil-teacher ratio.

I want to move on to payment or remuneration for principals, particularly in special schools, and larger special schools, in this country because it is an issue that has been brought to some of our attention. I will not give the school but by way of example, there is one principal who has 34 students employed by a board of management. There are eight teachers in the school from the ETB in the area, 33 SNAs, one teacher part-time from another area and four ancillary staff through secretaries and caretakers. This is the equivalent of running a small business in this country with those staffing levels of over 80 staff. Only the number directly employed by the board of management in that school is counted towards the remuneration for the principal's position, which is less than half of the actual staff that principal is managing. The demands on a principal in a school like that, with the level of need that would be in a special school of that size, are huge. Managing a staff of that size is an enormous job and is a very specialised job for someone to do. The current rules of only paying the principal from the number of staff members employed by the board and not counting the SNAs does not reflect their job at all. Is that something the Department is looking at?

I thank the Deputy. The principal's allowance is actually based on the number of enrolments. They are the bands for how big an allowance a principal gets. Teaching staff certainly fall out of that enrolment. There is a link between the number of staff and the number of pupils.

This principal is telling me it is in relation to the number of staff employed by the board of management and Ms Conduit is saying it is relation to the number of students.

The SNAs are employed by the board of management.

He is saying it is teaching staff. That is what he has told me.

It is pupil enrolments that is the determinant. To be the best of my knowledge, that is the case. Then, there are bands in terms of pupil enrolment.

Okay.

It is something that certainly has been brought to our attention. Matters to do with pay, remuneration, allowances, all of that has to fall into the industrial relations pay agreements and other mechanisms to agree those kinds of things. That is the space in which they would be considered. I am certainly aware of what the Deputy is saying in terms of-----

Apologies. There are a few current and former teachers in the room. It was linked, certainly at primary level, to the number of teachers. The INTO had a table that we used to have pinned to the notice board and it was linked to how many teachers were in the school. The number of teachers then is linked to enrolments, so it is a full circle. I agree with the line of questioning. We do not have all the answers here today. A lot of this has to come from the Minister but the line of questioning is correct.

Apologies. Yes. The teachers-----

Enrolment is linked to that.

-----are based on the enrolment so the bands go like that.

However, we are still going back to whether, in a school like that - and there is a growing number of SNAs in every school now - that is being reflected in what a principal is managing in terms of staffing. It is growing everywhere. Are we reflecting that for the demands that are on principals at the moment?

Sorry, in my intervention I let an overrun there. I call Deputy Darren O'Rourke.

I thank the witnesses. I return to this issue of the discrepancy between what the Department is saying and what teaching unions are saying to us in terms of this crisis. The INTO stated in bold that the Department is in denial on this. Based on what I am hearing from teachers and their representatives, it feels like that is the case. What is behind that difference? That is what I want to ask the witnesses about. When they say that analysis of teacher payroll shows that 3.1% of primary allocations and 1.8% of allocations in post-primary are unutilised, what are they talking about there? Are people who are on career breaks and on different types of leave, whether sick leave, maternity or parental leave, included?

I will bring in our statistician to answer that question.

I thank the Deputy for the question. The figures to which he is referring are based on an analysis of the teacher payroll system. We tot up the number of teachers who are being paid in the schools with their full-time equivalency and put that over the allocation against the school. That figure is teachers who are employed and working within the school. The 3.8% would be that we have allocated 100 posts to the school and 3.8% FTEs are not being used in that school; so 97% are.

On the point of people who may be on different types of leave, are they captured in this? I am just not-----

We capture them separately. On the payroll system, we have information about teachers who are on career breaks and we report them separately. However, they would create a post within the school that could be filled.

Those figures, the 3.1% and the 1.8%, are teachers working in the system in the school.

They are physically in the school and being paid for their employment.

Regarding the level of granularity the Department has around that, it is stated in the opening statement that certain schools experience ongoing challenges in recruiting teachers and in addressing vacancies that arise. What is meant by "certain schools" and what is the information showing? I am trying to bridge that gaps in terms of what every teaching union is saying to us. Outside of that, and I can speak on my own behalf as a constituency TD who happens to be married to a teacher, what they are telling us is something different. What is the opinion of the witnesses on what that difference is? What are the teaching unions saying to us that is not captured in those headline figures?

On the granularity question, we have it at individual school level. We can see what the allocation for that school is, how many teachers are employed within that school, to what level they are employed, whether they are full-time, part-time and how many hours they are working. Then we aggregate that up to look at school planning areas, or at counties; it is very flexible.

What are the figures saying? By way of example, if we take the issue of out-of-field teaching or of non-qualified teachers, what are the figures saying? Are there particular geographical areas or subjects that are of particular note?

At primary level, when we look at the allocations at county level, what pops out there is that around Dublin and the greater Dublin area the utilisation is 95%. Therefore, of all the posts we have allocated to Dublin and the greater Dublin area, 95% of them are filled. Then, outside, that rises to between 96% and 99%. That is the greater Dublin area at primary level. At post-primary level it is a bit more nuanced. It is kind of along the east coast but does stretch into the midlands and up into Donegal as well.

What are those figures? Are they 95%, 96% or 97%?

What we are aiming to do is put out a report, which will have the country level detail, very early in the new year. That will have the breakdown the Deputy is requesting.

There seems to be particular concern from the teaching unions regarding DEIS and special education. Is that reflected in the figures here?

Special education schools are slightly higher in terms of the percentage of unused allocated posts but then in absolute numbers it is quite low. There are 70 posts unused across the system at special education level. For DEIS, there really is not a huge difference. It is 0.5% at primary level and 0.3% at post-primary level. It is not coming out in the payroll figures that those schools are struggling.

What would that mean in terms of numbers then? Again, we are talking about overall figures here. Are there individual schools that are dragging that down and that-----

Absolutely. Once you go to individual school level, there will always be anomalies. These are just the national figures we have.

You can see in that what would happen if individual schools are the ones that are submitting the surveys.

We can see how that might be a case of having a problem in a school with recruitment and retention, and here would be an opportunity to talk about it. How does the system at departmental level respond to that type of situation? With due respect, we had this in terms of school buildings whereby the Department comes in and tells us it is doing big things. Parents care about their kids going to their school. If there is a shortfall in funding or a shortage of teachers, it is a significant problem for their children.

I might just come in there. The data collected by Mr. Alexander and his team, and other data, survey data and all of that, would feed into policy development around teacher supply. At post-primary level, for example, we know the subjects where there is a difficulty in recruiting teachers and producing enough graduates in those disciplines.

They are the STEM and Irish language subjects.

Yes. The upskilling programmes would then be introduced. Teachers can access those free of charge. Those programmes are proving to be very popular. There is high uptake of them, and teachers really want to upskill in those areas. In terms of initial teacher education, one of the Deputies asked about the Irish language. We have this year begun an upskilling programme in Irish for existing teachers, as well as a postgraduate master's course in education through Irish. It is starting this year too. We are trying to match what we are hearing from the unions, from surveys and from our data from the UNESCO project and trying to develop policies in a targeted way to reflect the complexity the Deputy referred to.

I thank Ms Conduit. There will be a second round of questions very shortly. I call Deputy Peter Roche.

I thank the witnesses very much for being here and for their comprehensive opening statement. I have a number of questions. If CAO demand and registrations remain strong, why do the witnesses think shortages persist in urban areas, especially in the Irish-medium schools and SEN settings?

What is being reflected there are other external factors. In terms of a full-employment economy, basically, teaching is not alone in finding recruitment difficult. It is difficult right across the public service and in other sectors. That situation is being reflected in teaching as well. Teaching is an attractive profession and we are still seeing high numbers going through the CAO. Of all first preferences going through the CAO, 6% are for teaching. That percentage has remained stable since 2017. There is a continuing value in Irish society and a continuing interest in relation to the teaching profession.

In terms of the Irish-medium schools, the Department just this year launched a policy and an action plan in terms of improving Irish-medium schools outside the Gaeltacht. Parts of that address teacher supply. Coming out of it, as I said, we have new programmes coming on stream to educate graduates through Irish. Marino Institute of Education already runs an existing B.Ed, but there will be an additional PME and these upskilling courses too. We are trying to address those very specific shortages in those areas.

Grand. In what I would consider the critical area of special needs education, how many SEN posts remain unfilled? Will the 860 posts announced in the budget be sufficient to address that shortfall?

I might ask Mr. Alexander for the figure on SEN.

As of March, again looking at the payroll figures, 68 posts were not filled.

Those were in special schools.

Yes, those were in special schools.

Those 68 posts remained unfilled at the time.

Those were 68 posts not filled across the system.

I would consider this to be an area where there is a pressing need to fill any vacant posts. What additional measures can be looked at to fill the positions in question?

It is certainly something that has been given a lot of attention by colleagues in the special education division and by us. An important aspect is in terms of not just immediate actions but also in helping teachers to feel confident in teaching in those settings that can be more challenging for them. We are looking at initial teacher education, and a mandatory placement in an SEN setting is currently being considered and explored by the Teaching Council. We are hoping guidance on that will issue in the new year. That will help newly qualified teachers to feel more confident in taking on those roles. Teacher professional learning opportunities for teachers in those roles or those who may be interested in them will be really important too. We have put other staff into those schools. If, for example, special schools are struggling to recruit staff, the special education team will work closely with them to make sure that the and the children who attend them are supported.

The clock is against me. In terms of teachers who leave the profession, is any data regarding the reasons that they do so collected?

I am not aware of any.

The administrative data can tell us how many such teachers there are, but it does not answer the question as to why they have left. Less than 1% - 0.9% - left the payroll system and did not appear anywhere else, so we assume they have left the profession. Quite a few of those will rejoin at a later stage. Effectively, however, we just look at the payroll. For example, in one cut of the payroll, Paul might be there and in the next he could be gone. In the next cut of the payroll in the next year, Paul might return or he might not. We do not, though, capture why someone has disappeared, unless parental leave, sick leave or something like that has been taken. In that case, the person would appear.

It is a high-pressured profession in many ways. It would be interesting, and this is what I would be looking at, to understand if people were making the choice to leave because of stress in the sector. I suppose there is no means of knowing.

The figures are very low in terms of those who disappear off the payroll.

Of course, yes.

If we see that increase over time, that would speak to the point that teachers are stressing and burning out.

Yes. I will not say that any one loss is critical, but there is a need to retain and maintain the numbers at all times. I would be interested if there was anything there that would suggest there may be an issue and we might need to dig deep and understand why people are leaving the profession. The percentage is small, as Mr. Alexander mentioned, but it would be nice to understand if people were making the choice because of the immense stress we believe is within that context.

I suppose the answer is those very small numbers. As I mentioned, we do have the second highest retention rate in the OECD. People could also be leaving for family reasons. It could be for a number of different reasons that people leave the profession. We cannot definitively tell the Deputy why it is happening. We are beginning to look at newly qualified teachers and attrition among that cohort. That is a study that Mr. Alexander's team has recently been resourced to undertake. Again, that will provide us with data. This speaks to the question regarding teachers who are graduating and then not necessarily entering the profession, and what is happening there. Our knowledge base is growing all the time and is helping us to develop policy that targets these different complexities.

I thank Deputy Roche very much. We will have a second round of questions if members want to prepare for it. We will begin that round with Deputy Ruth Coppinger and go in the same order. A few members have not come in yet, but they may join us and they will get their six-minute slot. I call Senator Tully.

I thank everyone for the presentation. I am a bit concerned, as some of the other members referred to, about the number of vacancies there are said to be compared with what the unions are telling us. I am also a member of the joint committee for further and higher education. We recently had representatives of the Teachers Union of Ireland, TUI, before us. We were talking about apprenticeships and what can influence making a choice in second school to go for an apprenticeship. They gave us some startling information from a survey the union carried out among principals and deputy principals. They said that 64% of schools have unfilled vacancies, 77% have advertised posts that attracted no applicants, 89% experienced recruitment difficulties in the last six months and 61% reported potential challenges. They also spoke about subjects such as construction studies, woodwork, engineering and metalwork being particularly hard to staff now.

That was in relation to craft apprenticeships. That is why they were talking about those. Do the witnesses agree that this is an issue? We are talking about maybe 3% being unfilled; it still amounts to a few thousand, however. That figure seems to suggest a much higher rate of vacancy. When the witnesses talk about this they are not just talking about permanent posts, are they? Are they talking about all posts?

We are talking about all allocated posts, yes.

The statistics given by the TUI are quite concerning.

I thank the Senator for the question. It is important to say the teaching unions obviously do their own surveys and they survey schools. I think Deputy O'Rourke mentioned that they are self-selecting surveys. Obviously, the schools that are experiencing difficulties are more likely to self-report in that way. I am not saying there is not an issue. Of course there is an issue. We are really aware of it, in particular, as we said, as regards construction studies and so on, and we are looking at ways to address it and improving the output of graduates to fill those posts. We do not disagree with the teacher unions. It is probably unfair that the INTO says we are in denial. We are in possession of a lot of data that we can look at. We listen to schools on the ground as well, and, of course, we hear that principals are having these difficulties. Sometimes it can reflect difficulties in getting substitutes in particular subjects. That is a slightly different issue and area from these allocated posts and how many of them are filled. It is a very complex picture.

I taught in a post-primary school for many years. I have been almost six years out of teaching because I went into politics full-time. There were difficulties recruiting Irish teachers a long time before I left the profession and there still seems to be a difficulty. The difficulties affected French teachers and maths teachers too. I taught maths. When I left nobody queried why I left or where I was going, but it was a difficult area to recruit teachers in. What is the Department looking at to recruit teachers in certain areas? What can be done to increase the number who go into certain subject areas?

That is what we are looking at. We have programmes in place. We are adding more programmes each year to upskill teachers who are already in the profession. There is a lot of interest in those programmes. Some of it is from teachers who are teaching subjects they are not necessarily qualified in, but we are also seeing and hearing reports that newly qualified teachers want to add a third subject to the suite of subjects they can offer an employer. They are really valuable new developments. We have had a number running for a few years in maths and other subjects. We have started one this year in Irish and computer studies. We are looking at different ways of filling those subjects. IT programmes may be more specialised. We now have, at post-primary level, concurrent four-year degrees which are teaching and STEM subjects combined. We are introducing this year a bursary for students in third and fourth year of those four-year programmes. That will be a bursary to help support and incentivise student teachers to make those decisions to go into those areas.

Previously, when you took a career break from teaching or were job-sharing, you were not allowed to teach. You could do any other profession. Now that has changed. Just out of interest, has that increased supply? I imagine that if someone is taking a career break from teaching, they do not want to be teaching for that year. Has that changed?

That is two measures. One, a job-sharing teacher can do substitution work outside of their job-sharing hours. Sometimes job-sharing teachers will take on additional hours to support their school and they are willing to do that on a case-by-case basis. We also introduced a derogation, if you like. If you were a teacher on a career break, you could spend 50% of your time doing substitution work, but there is no cap on that at the moment. That is a temporary measure. That has, I think, in some cases led to teachers leaving permanent posts on career breaks, moving elsewhere and undertaking substitution work. I think that is reflective of teachers wanting to teach in more rural areas than urban areas. Then there are schools benefiting from those teachers offering substitution services, so it is a kind of complicated picture. We are looking at teacher supply to see if it is really improving.

We move to our second round of questions. I call Deputy Ruth Coppinger.

I do not think we have got any further with the discrepancy between the Department's figures and those of the teaching unions. I want to ask the witnesses about something Ms Conduit touched on, namely incentives to keep people in teaching or to get people into teaching. Ms Conduit mentioned a €2,000 bursary just for STEM, not for any other subject. It does not apply to Irish or any of the other shortage areas, does it not?

No, the STEM bursary is just for those students, unless-----

Okay, so it is only for STEM and there is nothing for all the other subject shortage areas.

Except the upskilling programmes, which are offered free of charge.

Okay, but Ms Conduit can see a problem there. The shortage is not just in STEM; there are shortages in Irish, other languages and construction and a massive problem, as we know, with woodwork. That has been glaring for years.

The following are a few of the incentives the UK has brought in. I offer them just as a contrast. This is something the witnesses should look to the Minister about. I will summarise the postgraduate bursaries and scholarships available in the UK. The UK Department for Education states:

For 2025 ... we are offering bursaries of:

- £29,000 in chemistry, computing, mathematics and physics

- £26,000 in biology, design and technology, geography and languages (including ancient languages)

- £10,000 in art and design, music and religious education ...

- £5,000 in English

[...]

We are offering scholarships of:

- £31,000 in chemistry, computing, mathematics and physics

- £28,000 in French, German and Spanish

It really makes the Irish Government's effort pale into insignificance, does it not? That is just across the water.

The first thing I will say is that the cost of higher education in the UK is considerably higher than it is in Ireland. Education here is heavily subsidised. In the UK, you pay £9,000 per year in fees. They have much less access to student grants. Those bursaries do exist. They are obviously at a higher level than we are providing, but that is to reflect the real cost of higher education and entering the profession in the UK. As part-----

Just as an example, however, £29,000 is like the average industrial wage in England, so, even despite those costs, they are actually paying somebody to do these things, whereas we are giving nothing for most subjects. It is a huge difference, would Ms Conduit not agree? They have had a crisis for a long time but they have now taken action.

They continue to have a very severe crisis. Their crisis is much more severe than ours in that they have absolutely huge attrition rates. As part of the work we are doing on workforce development, I have met with my counterparts all over the UK: in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We have talked to them about these measures they are bringing in. You can obviously give bursaries and incentives to people to study, but that does not mean you get to retain them in the profession. That is a separate issue and conversation. They are operating in quite a different context and environment in the UK.

They are, but we are pretty much following everything that happens in the UK in terms of the programmes, the teaching styles and all that, so we are not that far behind.

I am next up. When I was teaching, each month we had to lodge a cuntas míosúil with the principal to account for all we had taught. I still have nightmares about it. There is maths, English, Irish, history, geography, science, drama, music, PE, art, SPHE and religion. We had to cover 12 subjects at primary level. Any time I met teachers from other jurisdictions, they would ask, "What subjects do you teach?", and they would be flabbergasted when they heard it was 12 subjects.

Senator Shane Curley had a line of questioning which I fully agree with.

I accept a lot of this falls under the inspectorate in the NCCA or maybe the Minister. There are parts of this the Department may not be able to answer. If we are to uphold the quality of Irish language in schools, is it time to have dedicated teachers in the school for Irish language? By implementing this, we would also allow ourselves to recruit a wider cohort of teachers, perhaps American citizens living here and people who trained in Strawberry Hill in England, who may not have ever studied Irish. We would be opening ourselves up to qualified and highly competent people to work here to teach SEN, which many of them do already, and science and maths subjects, and we would have a specialised teacher in the school leading on the Irish language to a different level. I do not admit it often but I had a very high level of Irish in the years I was teaching. I am alarmed at how much it has slipped in the six years I have been here, to the point at which politically I will now only do pre-recorded Irish interviews. I do not like doing live stuff because when you do not use Irish every day, it slips. It is alarming how quickly it slips. At some time we will need to get to the point when it is a specialised subject in the school, with a teacher going from room to room ag spreagach na bpáistí leading it out. I expect this is a question the Department cannot answer but in particular it might widen the cohort of people we can recruit into schools.

It is important to say the Department launched two policies this year on the Irish language in schools and there are a number of actions in these. The model we use in Ireland is that primary school teachers teach the entire curriculum. The inspectorate would say the new primary curriculum in Irish and English requires teachers to have a competence in Irish to be able to deliver it. Obviously we have quite high entry standards in terms of the standard of Irish for people getting into initial teacher education.

There was a time, way back in the olden days, when the church, the school and maybe the teacher's house were all co-located. Of course that was when it was religious provided education. Increasingly the State is getting involved and we have co-located campuses. Does the Department have control of an educational campus that has accommodation on it anywhere in the country? The Department of Health does, as there are still a few hospitals with nurses residential units. Are there any unusual situations? I suspect this is not the norm but are there any places where there is accommodation co-located that the Department happens to have in its jurisdiction where it could allow teachers to live?

Not to my knowledge.

I thank the witnesses. The next speaker is Deputy Cummins.

With regard to the Irish language I was in the Gaeltacht in the summers of 2023 and 2024. The number of teachers who originally came from somewhere else who were there learning Irish and improving their Irish was fantastic to see. If the Chair does not mind, I disagree with him because if we are going to progress the Irish language in this country, we must be immersed in the language in school and in our lives. If we only see it as a subject, it will be a challenge because it will not become part of our normal day. I am bilingual in German. When I speak Irish I have all these stutters because I was not immersed, whereas in Germany my family is German and it is easier because we are immersed in it. I slightly disagree with the Chair. I do not want to do so but, at the same time, we need to have immersion. In any language it is really important. The more we can have Irish as part of our daily life the better, and I am glad to see it is on radio and TV and there are great programmes.

The workforce plan is to be delivered in phases. The action group for workforce planning is already operational and comprehensive recommendations will be presented by 2028. I ask the witnesses to talk me through this a little bit. What stage is it at? It was stated earlier that items from this have already been published and I would be very interested to hear more about this. It is vital because our population is increasing we are going to have to match the workforce to our future population. This is the case for many jobs but we are here to talk about teaching.

I thank the Deputy. The reports that have been published are from the teachers' professional journeys study. The action group I chair is examining a workforce development plan. There are a number of modules to it and what we will be looking at are the issues we have been speaking about today, including career pathways, qualification pathways and entry into the profession. We are looking at the data and the knowledge base. We are also looking at all staff in the school and how they interact with one another. There are a number of strands to it. It is part of a wider strategic focus for the Department. There are four action groups. These include groups on leadership and governance in the system, equality and inclusion and other future focuses such as digital climate. They will feed into a long-term policy for educational strategy, which will be called our schools, our future. It is to try to think ahead. Nobody has a crystal ball. It is to make sure we look afresh at our schools, the challenges they have, how they operate and how we might future-proof them-----

Will the national convention also feed into this?

Yes, the national convention is an element of this. It is a particular model. There are four groups of children and young people-----

When will that start?

Next year.

In 2026.

Yes. Anne Looney will be chairing this work. It will look at all kinds of aspects of education. The action group work and the research being undertaken as part of it will feed into the convention but the views coming from the convention will feed into our work as well. They are connected.

I let a principal know I was coming to this meeting today to ask about retention. She said that for her, teacher burnout is a top issue. She said the role is becoming more and more unsustainable and that there are loads of other issues but in her school context total overload is the main issue, with new initiative after new initiative and insufficient training. She hopes the new curriculum roll-out will be better than the previous one. She said it also comes back to class size. That particular school has class sizes of between 25 and 37 children.

How many males do we have in primary school teaching? Is it about 15%?

No.

Higher than that?

It is lower than that.

Is it about 10% now?

It is 9% to 10% at primary level and 15% at post-primary level.

That is really sad. I am great at looking at other statistics and I see that in Australia 25% of teachers are male, in Canada it is 20% to 30% and in the UK it is 15% to 20%. If 9% to 10% of teachers are male, what percentage of principals are male?

I do not have the figure here but we publish it on the website every year.

It is higher than 9% to 10%.

I had a look and it is between 60% and 70%. This upsets me a lot. Why is this happening? There are so few males teaching in schools but such a high proportion of our principals are male. In my kids' school the only male teacher in the eight years my daughters have been in there has been the principal. There is now a female principal because he retired and there are no male teachers there at all. Are we doing anything to encourage men into the profession? I have two girls but if I had sons in that school looking all the time at a female teacher, it would not tell them it is a job they could work at. Are we working on getting more male teachers? Of the 3% lost and not retained, how many are male?

We do not have a breakdown with regard to the retention figures.

We could break it down.

It is a big problem.

The diversity of the teaching profession is something I am really interested in. It is something we are interested in. The gender issue is reflected internationally. Some countries do better than we do. It is always a bit higher at post-primary level and this reflects the range of subjects taught at that level. There are other elements of diversity. Children in classrooms today, and we have very diverse classrooms, are really not seeing themselves reflected in the teaching population. This is not to denigrate the high-quality teachers and what they do.

And the great work that they do. Is there an active plan on this?

It is something the workforce development plan will look at, with regard to how we increase diversity in the profession. Is it about providing different pathways for different people to enter? For example, we are looking at a tertiary pathway into teacher education.

The national tertiary council looks at further and higher education pathways, so that people who might not necessarily think teaching is something for them can do a year in a local ETB-----

Sorry, but this is really important. Why are there more male principals?

I suppose-----

It is 90% of teachers who are female.

I cannot tell the Senator why that is definitively, or what is behind it. There certainly are more male principals. They are not proportionate to the number of teachers.

Would Ms Conduit come back to me on that please?

I will continue in a similar vein in terms of who is going into teaching. I grew up on a council estate in Kells. I remember giving a lift to a few lads to a game of football. They talked about work and such and such a doctor, and one said to the other, "Your father has to be a doctor for you to be a doctor". Of course, they were men but there was the idea of this not happening in their area. It is about the issue of diversity but it is also about social class, including people in DEIS schools. Kids are coming out of DEIS primary schools into secondary. Katriona O'Sullivan has written well in relation to this. Is diversity, from a socioeconomic and socially disadvantaged perspective, something the Department is looking at in trying to see more teachers coming out of those areas?

I mentioned my wife so I might as well mention my brother, who is a teacher in Australia. He did his leaving certificate, went into construction and then did a teach for Australia programme, which seems to be based on a teach for America programme, which entails getting people from non-typical backgrounds into education. They then commit to teach in disadvantaged areas for a period. I am glad to hear Ms Conduit is interested in this. What is likely to happen in that area?

It is certainly something that is of huge interest. We see really successful initiatives. As the Deputy is probably aware, Katriona O'Sullivan benefited from the Trinity access programme. There are very high-resource, intensive ways of getting people, who may not feel that confidence in going into third level, to do those. One of the ways we are looking at is this tertiary pathway where people do a year initially in an ETB and then go into a teacher education qualification. We are exploring how that might work more broadly, so that is something.

As part of the UNESCO work, we are talking to colleagues in the Netherlands. They have a very well-developed second career initiative, which is exactly that. It is a way of attracting men, particularly, who have been working in industry. A lot of the time it is about social motivation. They want to give something back and are coming from engineering backgrounds and all of that. That is something we will look at as part of the workforce development plan.

There are a number of things but we are missing a lot of talent that could really contribute to the teaching profession as well. Of course, the important thing is that people need role models they feel reflect their own experiences. That is really important.

I agree with everything that has just been said. I had written down "white female", when we talked about teachers. In primary school, I had two male and two female teachers and my sons had all female teachers right throughout their primary school.

I want to touch on maths because we talk about the difficulty around STEM. I taught maths at post-primary level. I recall teaching a class one day - they were first or second years - and saying to them in slight frustration that they should have done this in primary school, and asking what they were actually taught in maths at primary school. They said to me that their teacher was no good at maths and they used to show her how to do the maths. The qualification for primary school teachers for maths is on the ordinary level at leaving certificate. Maybe that needs to increase. I am not sure on that; maybe the officials can clarify. If students do not get a good grounding in maths in primary school, they are losing out and it is very difficult for them to catch up in secondary school. We know a lot of students come in with this block against maths. It is like Irish. They have a block against it and say they are no good at it. I said to them that they cannot be no good at maths. There are so many different aspects to maths there will be something they are going to be good at. I often brought children, who came in thinking they were no good at maths, to getting high results. Can that be addressed? How students learn maths in primary and secondary school is having a knock-on impact on what subjects or topics they go on to do later.

The entry is a minimum entry qualification into the initial teacher education degrees. Obviously, the CAO points are quite high. I am sure entrants acquire higher levels of maths than the minimum entry and there are then exit standards that they have to meet. Does Ms Finnegan want to come in on the maths issue in IT?

In the current programme, literacy and numeracy are one of the seven core elements that underpin the accreditation standards. We are only seeing students emerging from those programmes now. The first round of programmes started from 2022, so undergraduates will only be coming out into the system in the next year or so. Postgraduates will be just emerging. We hope that with the students emerging from these newly accredited programmes, because literacy and numeracy are core elements that underpin everything in those programmes and thread through everything, we will see an improvement emerging into the system.

I checked and I do not think higher level maths was required for entry into primary school teaching, at that time. Perhaps it has changed.

Not as an entry criterion.

Therefore, it means someone may be very intelligent and have got high points but not have done higher level maths. You would imagine that person should be able to teach primary school maths, but in this case-----

As Ms Finnegan said, there is a much higher focus on it now, with the introduction of the new standards. One thing the Teachers' Professional Journeys study will look at is to compare teachers who emerged from the initial teacher education programmes before the new standards were introduced with the ones who will emerge when the new standards are introduced. It will see how those teachers feel prepared to teach in the classroom and for the range of things they have to teach. It will be interesting to see whether that will make a difference. The Céim standards will be under review from 2026, again, by the Teaching Council. It is something we are really looking at, evaluating and improving where it needs to be improved.

I listened with great interest to many of the contributions. Some of our line of questioning veered away from what the officials were here to answer. I agree with Senator Tully's point about maths. We brought up concerns about Irish, which matters in the profession. It probably matters in terms of the people we are bringing into the profession, retaining them, or where they go into other areas. I propose, with the agreement of members, that we try to get the NCCA, here in the new year at some point, specifically on maths and Irish, but other subjects as well, if members want to get into it. Maybe we could include the national inspectorate, if there is agreement on that.

Deputy Cummins had an alternative view to what I expressed, but I agree with a huge amount of what she said. The point I was making is that Irish is a subject in a lot of schools at the moment - it is teanga a dó - but we need to have a calibre of Irish. It is an issue that politically is skirted around too often. There is something radically wrong with the way Irish has been going for many decades. It is going to get worse, as a language, unless we teach and learn it to a higher standard and use it in a more day-to-day way than we currently use it.

I also suggest to members, if we can get agreement on this, that the departmental officials with us here today send our committee all interim reports on the longitudinal study, so that we can be kept up to date with developments. Would that be possible? Great.

The other aspect that was mentioned - forgive me, I did not take note of the title of this - was that the officials have a report on diversity in the professions. Is there a report on that? Are you trying to-----

No. It is something that will be part of upcoming work on the workforce development plan.

With the agreement of members, it would be good to look at diversity in teaching and learning. I taught in different schools. At one point, I was struck by the fact I was in a school with a high prevalence of Travellers. It was our daily ambition to keep them in school all the time and get them through the full system. Your heart would jump with joy if you heard they were going on to do their State examinations and were remaining in full-time education.

Your heart, of course, would sink if you heard they dropped out. The one thing that always struck me was that none of the staff were Travellers and for many of us, our life experiences were poles apart from theirs. The books did not resonate with their lifestyles. In the context of Travellers, people of different skin colour or the increased religious diversity in schools that we have now more than ever – that is probably organically addressed but the others are not – we might, if the committee agrees, look at diversity in the profession in the new year. Maybe that is something we can tie in with the NCCA and the inspectorate. Is there agreement in that regard? Does Senator Tully wish to make any additional proposals on maths or anything that we might examine?

We can speak to the NCCA and take it from there.

Very good. I sincerely thank all of our witnesses for being here today. As always, the testimonies and information they provide us with have been useful. We have more work to do in this regard but having the witnesses here today is greatly appreciated. Our meeting now stands adjourned until Thursday, 10 December 2025 at 12.30 p.m., where we will first meet in private session and then proceed to public session. I sincerely thank the committee secretariat, as always, and the technical team who have allowed this meeting team to take place. I really appreciate it.