No apologies have been received in advance of today's meeting. 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 Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, ASTI, Mr. Kieran Christie, general secretary and Mr. Padraig Curley, president; from the Irish National Teachers Organisation, INTO, Ms Anne Horan, president and Ms Deirdre O'Connor, deputy general secretary; and from the Teachers Union of Ireland, TUI, Mr. Michael Gillespie, general secretary and Mr. Anthony Quinn, president.

I should say for transparency that I am a member of the INTO union myself but today I will be wearing my political hat and acting independently as Chairman.

I will call on the witnesses to make their opening statements in the following order: Mr. Christie first and then Ms O'Connor followed by Mr. Gillespie. They will each have five minutes. The opening statements will be followed by questions from members of the committee. Today, members will have six minutes each within which to ask their questions. I ask that members leave some additional time for the witnesses to respond. We will hear from Mr. Christie first please.

Good morning and I thank the Chairman for the opportunity to address the committee. Ireland is experiencing a deep teacher recruitment and retention crisis across second-level schools with severe implications for the quality and sustainability of the education system. The ASTI believes that the situation has become chronic with vacancies going unfilled, subject provision shrinking and schools resorting to emergency measures to maintain timetables. While Government responses have acknowledged the issue, we would argue that actions to date have been insufficient, piecemeal and lacking in strategic vision.

The crisis has been developing for over a decade but has now reached a point where it is affecting every part of the school system. ASTI surveys repeatedly indicate widespread difficulty in hiring and keeping teachers. In recent data from 2024–25, around two-thirds of school leaders reported unfilled vacancies even after multiple rounds of advertising. Approximately 75% of schools stated they have advertised posts for which no applicant applied. Hundreds of posts nationwide remained vacant last August as schools prepared to reopen for the current school year. Many schools rely on non-qualified, out-of-field or casual teachers and a significant proportion have had to drop certain subjects entirely.

Shortages are most acute in mathematics, Irish, French, construction studies-woodwork, engineering-metalwork, English, biology, home economics, chemistry and art. In urban areas in particular, affordability pressures make recruitment even harder.

Schools are using a range of stopgap strategies that are increasingly unsustainable. Special educational needs, SEN, teachers are frequently reassigned to mainstream classes, thereby reducing supports for vulnerable students. Subject options are being cut and in some schools, students are taught by a succession of different teachers over the course of a term.

Parents in some communities have organised public meetings to demand action, reflecting the growing concern that students are losing valuable learning time and subject continuity. Teachers report that students commonly have multiple free classes due to staffing shortages, which is a sign of the immediate impact on educational quality.

The crisis is structural, long predicted, and driven by several interlocking factors. Teachers' pay has been eroded in real terms. OECD data shows that Irish teachers’ salaries fell by 6% in real terms between 2015 and 2023, even as pay in other OECD countries rose by 4%. Pay inequality for new entrants, introduced in 2011 and later reversed, damaged morale and the attractiveness of the profession. Allowances for teaching through Irish, SEN roles and island schools were abolished for new beneficiaries in 2012 and have not been restored. Contract insecurity is a major deterrent. A substantial majority of new teachers start on part-time or low-hours contracts. Only 26% receive full hours on entry and just 11% to 13% are granted permanent contracts. Many must wait years before receiving a contract of indefinite duration, CID, delaying their ability to access housing or to plan long-term careers. The initiative taken by the Minister, Deputy McEntee, last Easter to address this matter, while welcome, may be too little and too late. Teachers returning from outside the EU face further barriers as their experience is often not recognised for incremental credit, effectively placing them back at the start of the pay scale. High accommodation costs, particularly in urban areas, have made teaching financially unviable for many. The oversubscription for discounted key-worker apartments in Dublin, such as the Bolands Mills development some time ago, highlights the severity of housing pressures. The teacher unions argue that the cost of living now deters new entrants and pushes existing teachers to leave the profession or relocate abroad. Workload and bureaucracy is another factor. Teachers cite intense and escalating workloads that go beyond classroom teaching. Initiative overload, administrative paperwork, assessment demands and a complex inspection regime contribute to burnout. Many teachers report that the job has become unsustainable and that they feel less valued than peers in comparable professions. There are also training route barriers. The extension of the professional master of education, PME, from one to two years has been a significant barrier. The average cost of the PME is around €14,700 in fees, on top of six years of education, loss of income and so on.

The most significant impact is on students with reduced staffing, fewer subject options available and specialist subjects being increasingly vulnerable. Students may be taught by non-specialists or by several different teachers within the same school year, undermining learning continuity. SEN supports are reduced as teachers are reassigned to cover mainstream shortages. Schools face greater operational pressures, with principals struggling to fill timetables and maintain subject breadth. The loss of promotional posts, which were cut during the recession and never fully restored, has intensified management workload and removed career progression opportunities, making retention harder.

I have a further section in this submission, which I will not have time to read. The whole of the contribution has been submitted to the committee. It is in relation to evaluation of the Government response. I am sure it will be drawn out in the discussion. I will, however, list off the solutions the ASTI has offered in terms of the crisis. ASTI's recommendations include providing full-time, permanent employment from the start, post-probation, including for teachers returning from abroad; reducing the PME from two years back to one year to reduce financial and time barriers; restoring and expanding posts of responsibility to rebuild career structures; conducting a pay review, including shortening pay scales and restoring key allowances; increasing teaching allocations so schools can offer full-hours contracts at entry; recognising relevant overseas experience for incremental credit; introducing targeted housing supports, including ring-fenced affordable accommodation; and reducing the bureaucratic workload and streamlining administrative demands.

I thank Mr. Christie. To clarify for all in attendance, the transcript of the witness's entire speech as read here is recorded in the Official Report on the Oireachtas website. The full document, however, as submitted to the committee will be included on the committee's page on the Oireachtas website. I now invite Ms Deirdre O'Connor on behalf of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation, INTO.

I thank the committee for affording us this opportunity to address members on the matter of recruitment and retention of teachers. The Irish National Teachers Organisation believes that for children to achieve the best possible outcomes, they need to be taught by a qualified teacher every day, including when their assigned teacher is on leave. In order to achieve this, the recruitment and retention of teachers is of paramount importance. We should not underestimate the scale of the challenge. The Global Report on Teachers, reveals an urgent need for 44 million primary and secondary teachers worldwide by 2030. Ireland is in a global market for teachers who are well educated, flexible and mobile. To compete in this market, Ireland needs to ensure that the teaching profession in Ireland is well paid and properly resourced and that teacher supply is planned to meet demand. UNESCO is also currently compiling a major report on the main factors affecting teacher supply in Ireland, which will be published in 2026.

Unlike in many countries, attracting people, particularly school leavers, into initial primary teacher education is not an issue. The demand for primary teaching undergraduate courses remains strong. Typically, about 3.5 % of all CAO applicants for level 8 courses at higher education indicate a preference for an undergraduate primary education teaching course. The successful applicants have over 450 CAO points. There are now 58,266 registered primary teachers on the Teaching Council register. However, repeated surveys show that there are vacant posts across the primary and special education sectors and that unqualified personnel are acting in the place of teachers. A Department of Education and Youth review of teacher payroll in March of this year found there were 1,847 vacant posts across schools. Most of those were at primary level with 1,228 posts. Particular geographical locations, namely, Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare, continue to experience acute shortage due to the impact of the housing crisis. Teachers and other public servants simply cannot afford to live in the communities they serve, which leads to long commute times and stress. This in turn makes working in tax-free areas such as the Middle East an attractive option for teachers looking to build up a deposit and get a mortgage. While these figures are a bit out of date, in 2019 an estimated 6,000 Irish teachers were employed in schools across the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman.

Teacher working conditions are key to recruiting and retaining teachers. Irish primary teachers teach in the largest class sizes in Europe. The system of supporting children with special educational needs through psychological and other therapeutic supports is not fit for purpose and children’s unmet need can be expressed in the form of challenging behaviour, which causes stress and physical injury to their teachers. A series of surveys by the INTO in conjunction with the Catholic Primary School Management Association, CPSMA, and Irish Primary Principals’ Network, IPPN, in 2023, 2024 and 2025 have shown settings where recruitment and retention of teachers is particularly challenging. Special schools show higher rates of vacant posts than mainstream schools. Schools that operate through the medium of Irish and schools in disadvantaged areas also have high rates of vacant posts and unqualified personnel. The matter of the availability of substitute teachers is of grave concern. In our survey in 2025, 60% of the responding schools reported that they had been unable to source a substitute for an absence and 56 schools reported that they had ten or more days where they could not get a substitute. A freedom of information request by TG4 in 2025 revealed that 8,883 individuals were paid at the unqualified rate in primary schools in the 2023-24 school year.

The INTO believes that substitute supply panels at primary level are key to ensuring that qualified substitutes are available for all short-term absences. Currently 587 posts are allocated to 168 supply panels that allow principals to access qualified short-term substitutes and offer security of employment to teachers carrying out substitute work. The Department needs to continue to take account of the need for these panels and carry out regular reviews to ensure that they are adequately staffed. The INTO has made repeated calls on the Department to take action to address teacher supply issues. The first action is to establish reliable statistics to reflect the demand, and particularly to predict demand in the future. The Department needs to take an approach that relies not only on demographics but also takes account of policy. For example, Government decisions to extend leave for parents, which we welcome, require planning to ensure qualified replacement teachers are available. The programme for Government commits to reducing class size to 19:1 and to introduce targeted measures in schools with very large classes. The Department estimates that reducing class size by one pupil would require 400 posts, so they need to factor that in. They also need to factor in increases in demand for special education places, and for different kinds of leave.

In summary, in order to address the recruitment and retention challenges, the Department needs to develop improved models of projected demand, improve teachers’ terms and conditions and ensure that substitute supply panels of qualified teachers are available to cover for all teacher absences.

I thank Ms O'Connor. The other elements of her speech that may not have been covered will be included on the committee's page on the Oireachtas website.

The Teachers Union of Ireland, TUI, welcomes the opportunity to make this submission to the Oireachtas committee on the escalating teacher recruitment and retention crisis in the post primary sector.

This crisis has deepened significantly due to the acute accommodation shortages, rising cost-of-living pressures, unsustainable workloads and the structural barriers to entering and remaining in the profession. While the problem is now broad and systemic, its origins lie in the unilateral 2011 Government-imposed two-tier pay system, which placed newly appointed teachers on inferior salary scales. Changes to pension schemes were also introduced. Although unions successfully campaigned for the restoration of pay equality, the consequences of a decade of discrimination continue to shape perceptions of teaching as an unattractive and insecure profession.

Compounding this, the drift toward low-hour, insecure contracts for new entrants has created a situation where teaching is no longer viewed as the safe or stable career it once was. TUI research shows that just 26% of recently appointed teachers received a full-hours contract at entry and only 11% secured a permanent position on their commencement in employment. Notably, 78% of members who entered the profession before 2015 report that given today’s housing and cost-of-living pressures, they could not afford to begin their teaching career now. This stark statistic highlights a significant threat to the sustainability of the profession. Excessive workloads, ever-expanding administrative demands and class sizes well above EU norms are accelerating burnout and prompting many to leave teaching altogether or to retire early.

The impact on schools means that students most acutely feel the consequences of these shortages. Shortages undermine subject choice, continuity of learning and equitable access to the full curriculum. Schools increasingly depend on a succession of substitute teachers or must assign teachers outside their subject specialism.

A TUI principals’ and deputy principals’ survey of 111 schools revealed that 75% of schools advertised posts for which no teacher applied, 64% had unfilled vacancies, 20% were forced to drop subjects and only 3% believe Government action to date has been sufficient. These findings underscore the urgent need for structural and policy intervention.

As for the solutions and what must be done, while broader housing measures are essential at national level, several education-specific actions would provide immediate and impactful relief to the recruitment and retention crisis. Teacher allocations should be strengthened to enable full-time permanent jobs. Schools must receive increased staffing allocations that allow the creation of full-hours and permanent posts from initial appointment. Adequate allocations would also ensure continuity of subjects, protect smaller subjects, which are vital to student choice, and reduce class sizes that currently exceed international norms.

The Department also needs to restore and expand career structures. Cuts to posts of responsibility during the last recession have never been fully reversed. These roles are essential to school leadership, student support and the distribution of workload. Their restoration would help enhance career progression, make the profession more attractive and relieve administrative burdens that are contributing to burnout.

The professional master of education, PME, has to be reformed. The two-year PME represents a significant financial barrier, particularly for those from lower-income backgrounds. Halving its duration would widen access to the profession, reduce financial pressure on student teachers and align Ireland more closely with international norms in teacher preparation.

We have to recognise international teaching experience. Under current arrangements, teachers returning from non-EU private schools - most commonly in the Middle East - are placed on the first point of the salary scale, regardless of years of service. This is inequitable, discourages skilled teachers from returning and contributes to the shortages. Meaningful recognition of international experience must be implemented.

Key allowances must be reinstated. The abolition in 2012 of allowances for special educational needs qualifications, teaching through Irish and island teaching has had a negative impact on recruitment into these essential areas. Their reinstatement would support supply where shortages are most acute.

The excessive workload and administrative burden must be addressed. Teachers consistently report that increased workload and workload intensification, particularly bureaucratic and non-teaching duties, is a primary driver of burnout. A comprehensive national strategy is required to streamline administrative processes, reduce unnecessary documentation and allow teachers to focus on teaching, learning and extracurricular activities.

In conclusion, the measures implemented to date have been reactive and insufficient and are what many teachers describe as sticking-plaster solutions. Meanwhile, other jurisdictions aggressively recruit Irish teachers, offering full-time posts months in advance, accommodation supports and clearer career progression. Ireland is increasingly losing both new graduates and experienced teachers to these international recruitment drives.

Unless decisive action is taken, the current crisis will deepen, diminishing educational quality, eroding student opportunities and undermining Ireland’s ability to sustain a high-quality public education system. The TUI urges the Oireachtas to prioritise and implement the above measures as a matter of national urgency.

We are now going to members' questions. Each member has six minutes. We should get a second round of questions. Members might hear me tapping my glass occasionally. I do not like cutting across people and allow a little overrun. Six minutes is really about six and a half minutes, but it is important that we try to keep some structure. Members should conclude their contributions when they hear me tapping the glass and we will get on to the next speaker. We have a rotational speaking system and I am first up today.

I picked a few things out from the witnesses' opening statements. When I left the primary school classroom in 2020 to take up my new role in Leinster House, the initiative overload, which a number of witnesses referenced, was colossal, as was the administrative overload. It had got to the point that teaching - the thing we were trained to do in college - had become secondary to the administrative burden.

We met officials from the Department of education last week and were told - I hope that I am correctly quoting the official - that 4,600 teachers are currently domiciled overseas. They are fully skilled and with the right incentives could be back in primary and second-level classrooms. Beyond the factors that people generally agree on, such as the cost of living, pay and the recognition of overseas service, are there other incentives that should be introduced? Should it all be the carrot? I do not like using the word "stick" but until we stabilise teaching numbers, should people be required to stay here for a couple of years before they consider going overseas?

According to our figures, there were approximately 3,600 teachers working overseas two years ago. It has easily gone up since then. We know that foreign schools recruit in October, we do not recruit until June or July. Young teachers are given far more certainty earlier. We are competing in an open market. I do not believe the stick will work. People are being refused career breaks and they just resign. Part of the reason for that is financial. Those of us who had the beneficial pension scheme accrual rate of 1/40th per year stayed for those reasons. They do not have that. Theirs is calculated on a career average and they quickly worked out that staying is irrelevant because the pension schemes are so bad. We must use the carrot. The carrot means that if they come back, they get incremental credit.

There is also another problem. A lot of them are coming back after working abroad five or ten years and even if they are prepared to gamble on the lower pay, the first problem they have is getting mortgages because they did not have a full-time job for a couple of years. We are meeting a lot of teachers who have the deposit for a house but they cannot get a mortgage without a permanent job or guarantee. I believe a one-year contract of indefinite duration, CID, may help that. However, imagine if they got incremental credit on that of that. Some of these people are telling us that the pay is not the problem, it is the ability to borrow when they return home as it is based on pay.

An increment is a double-edged sword. I, and most of my friends in Mary Immaculate College, came straight out and applied to local schools, stayed in the area and became part of the teacher base that is required. We would all have loved a year in Dubai or Abu Dhabi. I am not here to judge; everyone has to choose their own path in life.

However, should we incentivise people to go away, upskill and come back? The increment is needed to entice people back but it also disregards those who, after their years of training, decide to stay in the Irish system.

I am wondering whether the INTO has a view on that.

In terms of initiative overload, I point the committee towards a study being launched today out in DCU CREATE on burnout among teachers due to the pressures on them. It is unfortunate that some of the reporting has focused on the parents, but one of the things highlighted that there very clearly is initiative overload, excessive paperwork and so on.

On the people who are domiciled overseas and the incentives, this is an international market and that is the reality of the globalised world. People can go and teach abroad. How do we keep them here? We do that with pay and terms and conditions that match or exceed those abroad. I have people saying the increment is a double-edged sword given the way it treats people who went away while it rewards loyalty. There are other mechanisms, for example the supplementary panel in the primary system, which gives priority for permanent employment to people who have done three years of substitution and other work within the system and who may not be able to access the contracts of indefinite duration, CIDs, which you get as a result of staying in the one school. That is another way to incentivise people to stay around, if you like. I agree there is no reality to saying we can put our young teachers under lock and key and ask them not to go away when their colleagues, friends and cousins who are doctors are flooding out to Perth. It just does not work.

I thank Ms O'Connor. My next question is for the ASTI. Teaching is one profession, but to have a fuller argument and debate on this you would want to be talking about gardaí, nurses, teachers, front-line civil servants, firefighters and a whole load of people who are needed in urban high-rent, high-mortgage environments but who cannot afford to live where they work. Some additional allowance is certainly needed if someone is working in a city centre environment. There are probably mechanisms we could easily use. The Gaeltacht allowance was there. There are several additional allowances. The mechanisms are there so that cannot be the excuse. Do the unions have an alliance with other unions like the INMO or others that have key front-line staff who also need some stipend to be able to live in an urban, high-cost environment?

The Chairman is touching on a key aspect of this thing, which is that many students, when they become qualified teachers, have considerable debt. Linking in with his previous question, that debt is sometimes much more manageable if you go to Dubai for a tax-free salary than if you stay here. That links to the accommodation and so on. I referenced in my presentation the Boland's Mills project, where affordable housing for key workers was made available and was heavily oversubscribed. We talk to our colleagues in some of the other professions about possibilities that could alleviate the process.

I will make a final comment because I am conscious of time. The Chairman referenced 4,600 overseas, by the Department's statistic. There is a big hole in that in the sense that the last time I looked, there were well in excess of 120,000 teachers registered with the Teaching Council and about 70,000 in the system, so there is a 50,000 gap there. Many of them are still in the country but they are choosing not to be teachers because there are more attractive options in other professions.

There are a few of us within that in this room. I would say there are about four or five us registered with the council. I agree on the numbers. Forgive me, my time is well and truly up but we will get to some of this later. Deputy Cummins is next.

I thank everyone for their contributions so far. Last week, we had in representatives of the Department and they said that if students are teaching abroad in a non-private school system where there is a regularised national curriculum, the increments will be paid and can be transferred back. I was surprised to hear that because my understanding is that that is not the case for so many teachers who are coming back, but maybe that is because they are teaching in private schools. I just wanted to know what on-the-ground scenario the unions were experiencing with that.

The second thing I want to talk about is the PME. I understand that the reasoning the unions are giving for reducing it to one year is because of cost. I agree the cost of the PME is so prohibitive. It is almost €15,000 to do a course over two years and for a lot of that time you are working. I would love to see a model where you are paid for doing the work. If you are an electrician doing the working part of your apprenticeship, you are paid for that and you are not for the college part, depending on the apprenticeship. That model is so important. I am reluctant for it to be reduced to only a year because while they have studied their subject, whatever it is, one year is very short to learn all they need to learn with regard to education disadvantage and special education, combined with a work placement. If it is reduced, how will those young people - or whatever age the people learning to teach are - learn all the things they need to learn? We have heard at this committee over time that with special education needs there has to be constant on-the-job training. That is great, but from working with those from disadvantaged backgrounds in the school completion programmes I know that if student teachers do not come from that area, they will sometimes be very shocked when they arrive in a school and see the level of need. How will they learn that within the one-year model and how could we have a mixture of both? I do not mind who answers.

Maybe I will start this time. I watched the Department of education presentation and the information given was accurate. Notwithstanding the fact I speak for a union, as I am sure our colleagues have the same experience, lots of people go abroad to countries where the system is largely private and there is not a state curriculum. We find we have people coming back and starting on the bottom of the scale, which is quite a problem.

The Deputy's observations on the PME are very apposite and interesting. I was talking to somebody in the last day or two who has two children, one of whom is training to be a solicitor, with the other training to be a teacher. They were complaining that the one who is going to be a teacher is going to cost the parents considerably more than the one who is going to be solicitor. The Deputy is driving at the heart of the problem., namely, the lack of payment while the training is ongoing. It is a six-year commitment. We would not be averse to the idea of a second year of the PME being a paid year but no proposal has been forthcoming from the Department. There has been a lack of creativity around the kind of thinking the Deputy is providing here.

The Department said last week that the students in the last year of the BEd can register with the Teaching Council. My question at that time related to how they are going to learn. I taught initial teacher education in DCU where they have 39 hours a week of lectures. I was wondering where they were going to fit in the teaching and what is going to give. I am not sure about that. Maybe the INTO can take that. Perhaps that is the part that alleviates the difficulty. The union officials are here to talk about teacher recruitment and retention and the difficulties we have. It needs to be talked about longer and there needs to be a solution that fits everybody, but it is the cost. Students would not be averse to staying two years if there was a payment towards these people who are actually working in schools. Let us face it, they are not sitting looking at teachers, they are doing it themselves.

That makes sense entirely.

The INTO has a fundamentally different view on the PME course. We do not want to see the two-year PME reduced but I agree on the cost of it, especially for those who are pursuing it through the private colleges. There are also the PME courses available through the State-funded colleges. A number of years ago, the Department increased the number of places on the State-funded PME courses but did not give any additional resources to the colleges of education and they were not able to fill those courses. It is important that people have that full two-year experience to do primary teaching.

People who are doing the PME course and who are in third and fourth year of their BEd can register with the Teaching Council as student teachers and can sub as an unqualified person under the five-day rule. That is very welcome. It helps primary schools with their shortage of substitute teachers. Primarily, however, it is for times when those students are not in college, namely September, around the Christmas holidays, etc.. It is a very welcome provision.

The first thing is that there are massive differences abroad in EU and non-EU countries. If you are in England and Northern Ireland, it is fully transferable. That is the problem. There is also a difference between primary and post-primary, which is very unfair. There are all sorts of differences. The problem is that we have to treat them all equally, because they all bring back relevant experience. Even if they bring back experience to show that a system does not work and that there is something wrong with it, that is very valuable for schools.

On the PME, there should be a second year that is paid. There are jurisdictions where it is paid. They give about two thirds of a timetable for 70% of the pay in the second year. The TUI would not be against that. The big problem is that this is not just about money; it is also about geography. In certain parts of this country, students cannot get placement schools because of the numbers between the private institutions and whatever. We also have a problem about the two years not being sufficient to facilitate all the people who want to do it.

I thank all three unions for all the invaluable engagement I have had with them over the past seven or eight months since I was elected to the Seanad. The unions are very accessible, and it is really nice to have that crutch to lean on when advice is needed. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.

On pay and equality for post-2011 teachers, I was a lower paid teacher in the secondary school system. I have lived the problems to which the witnesses referred, but I can still empathise with the system.

On workload and student-teacher ratios, I was involved in teaching for about 11 years. Up until February, what I saw on the ground was a number of teachers who would love to get involved in extra curricular activities but who simply do not feel they can commit because they do not have the time. An Irish teacher with 25 students will have 25 leaving certificate essays a week to correct, not to mention all the other things they have to do. The administration they need to do is becoming unsustainable. Is there a perception among the unions that the Department has buried its head in the sand in the sense that we are educating and training teachers simply to emigrate?

I think so. There is a perception that a lot of people are emigrating or are leaving after two or three years. The problem is that this could get worse. What we do not want is what happened in the eighties, when we exported all our teachers because of the change in the pupil-teacher ratio. We have an opportunity to avail of the demographic shift that is coming and to reduce class sizes. There are only two ways to lessen the burden on teachers. Either you reduce the number of contact hours or reduce class sizes. People forget that it is not just about contact hours; it is also about all the preparation, corrections and extra curricular activities. It is very hard to build relationships with students if there are 30 students in a class. We have the biggest class sizes in Europe. One way to reduce the workload is to reduce class sizes. The other way to do it is to reduce contact time. My preference would be to reduce class sizes because that benefits students. We are moving towards additional assessment components, including classroom-based assessments, CBAs. A CBA is impossible to do with 30 students in a class. There is a lot of bespoke learning that has to happen with those, and that is a problem. We have to start moving to smaller class sizes for a 21st century education system.

On whether we are training too many teachers, the evidence is that we are not.

I did not say we are training too many. For absolute clarity, I asked if we training teachers to simply just let them emigrate?

The problem we have is that the Department's statistics are fundamentally flawed. At primary level, for the past number of years the Department has been relying on the fact that the demographics are falling. Basically, it is saying, "Sit tight, it will be all right in a couple of years because there will be fewer pupils." What that fails to take into account is that there has been an extension of the various types of leave, that 3% of children at primary level are in special education places, that there has been an explosion in the number of special classes, special school places and special education teachers. We acknowledge that is all progress, but the Department is not planning for that. Teachers may be mobile and they may be going abroad. Our view is that in a lot of cases primary school teachers go abroad for a couple of years and then come back when they have saved money or whatever. The Department has to be realistic and take account of the fact the we need to reduce class sizes because there are 22.5 pupils per class at primary level. In Europe and the OECD, the average pupil-teacher ratio is 19:1. That is where we need to be.

The theory at the heart of the Senator's question might be correct. The big problem was highlighted as recently as this morning's edition of the "Today with David McCullough", which we listened to as we travelled to this meeting. Two principals were on the show to speak about a totally different matter, but both took the opportunity to raise the problem that they have in relation to recruitment and retention in their schools. One was a DEIS school in Cork city and the other was a fee-paying school in Dublin, which gives an idea of the breadth of the problem. One of the principals talked at length about the inability to source maths teachers. I watched last week's proceedings when officials from the Department were before the committee. There is an extent to which they are in denial, in our opinion, regarding the scale of the problem nationwide.

Yes.

A few hours ago, I listened to the programme on the RTÉ Player and there it was in stark relief.

On the PME, I will follow up on what Deputy Cummins said. I did the PME from 2014 to 2016. It was great in one sense to get practical, on-the-ground teaching experience over two years. I learnt a lot in different school settings, different types of schools and schools where various socioeconomic circumstances obtained. Overall, however, I probably could have condensed what I learnt in the lecture theatre into one year. In other words, I could have got through the PME in one year and then gone out into the world of work and learnt anyway. I went through the Droichead programme. A mentorship already exists there whereby the PME could be streamlined into one year. As a result, we could get teachers through the system and into posts with a heavy level of mentorship from peer teachers starting off. All of that would help to address the flow of teachers coming out of college.

I have one question. We might have to come back to it later. The child psychology course is now basically free, as long as people either commit to teaching in Ireland for a certain number of years afterwards or to pay back the fees over time. Would a free or heavily discounted PME attract more teachers?

We will get one witness to answer that. Hopefully, we will get a second round in.

The answer to that question is teachers do not want to have to go. They want to stay, be rooted in their communities and be involved in the culture, the sports, etc. It is a scenario where they are being compelled to go because they are not being offered full-time contracts in schools. There is also the accommodation issue. Everything is culminating in a perfect storm which is leaving teachers with little or no choice other than to go. If we create a level playing field that will afford teachers opportunities here, then I think they will stay.

Very good.

I am also currently a member of the INTO. I was a teacher for nearly 20 years

I hope the Deputy had more luck in their draw. I never won a car, but I hope the Deputy did.

I have never won a car either. I have lived through the recruitment and retention issue. I had loads of responsibilities, I was a vice-principal and I taught in a Gaelscoil. I agree with everything the witnesses have said. In the Gaelscoileanna, recruitment was more difficult. I know from friends who are still principals that they still have posts that are unfilled. I also know, in the context of the Gaelcholástaí, that there is a problem of people dropping subjects, especially because of the Gaeilge. There is also the issue of people teaching subjects who do not have Irish. I have lived through it, and I agree with the witnesses.

Reference was made to teachers' pay and the allowance. I moved from one Gaelscoil to another and lost my allowance for teaching through Irish.

I 100% think that allowances need to be reinstated in our most challenging schools, in DEIS schools, in SEN, in schools where teaching is done through Gaeilge and in island schools. Beyond allowances, are there any other measures the witnesses would be advocating for to target that?

We are looking for the restoration of allowances. It is part of our claim under the local bargaining part of the public service agreement, targeting liúntais do múinteoirí sa Ghaeltacht agus múinteoirí atá ag obair trí mheán na Ghaeilge. We are very anxious to get those back. As well as the island allowance, we are also looking for a new allowance for teachers in DEIS schools and for teachers teaching in special schools. We believe that is a tool that could be used to address teacher supply and demand and that is part of our case. We are frustrated at the speed at which that whole local bargaining process is moving. I do not know if this committee has any role in moving on the Departments of education and public expenditure and reform but those allowances are key, in our view.

On pay, post-primary teachers gave up their pay rise for sectoral bargaining to end discrimination and give back the professional master of education, PME, allowance to teachers. Teachers voted with their feet. They gave up a pay rise. We cannot afford to give up our 1% in local bargaining. That is why it has to be sorted for us as well. Otherwise, post-primary teachers will be 2% behind. They should never have been asked to give up their 1% to solve a problem created by a Government that should never have punished new entrant teachers. That is something that is very hard for our teachers to take.

One of the biggest problems is that the incremental scale is too long. Twenty-three years to get to the top of the scale is too long. Going back, members heard what I said earlier about mortgages. Some of the mortgage providers - not all of them - are now taking into account that they will start giving people the multipliers a couple of years ahead because for a lot of people, it is about ability to pay. That was brought home to me by a couple I met who, when we got the last pay rise - the 10% - they said that is three hours day. I asked them what they meant by three hours a day. They said they can now live in Naas as opposed to living in Portlaoise when they are trying to buy a house. I never even thought of it in those stark terms. That is what was meant by an ability to buy a house, so we have lots of problems.

I will keep going. I am based in Kildare. The 2025 surveys found a 39% vacancy rate in Kildare, which is the highest after Dublin and Wicklow. It is definitely down to the cost-of-living and housing crises, as the witnesses mentioned. The Department said that it has 97% of posts filled. Is it collecting data differently? Is there a way it should be doing it? What is the Department not telling us?

The Department is including out-of-field teachers. As the Deputy said, where are we going to get an Irish teacher? Somebody who may not be a qualified Irish teacher might have gone to a Gaelscoil or might be from an Irish-speaking area or a family that spoke Irish at home. We have a lot of out-of-field teachers, which is maybe reflected in our statistics but not in the Department's statistics.

I will get in on that too. You can question statistics. If you talk to any principals or look up job vacancies, you will see there are vacancies every day for the last two years. It is clear there is a crisis in teaching. If we look at the last one, there needs to be a review of pay, including restoring key allowances. I would point out that the posts of responsibility, which were highlighted earlier, were never brought back to the levels they were before the Celtic tiger era. Approximately 50% of staff had AP1 allowances, especially. Now it is down to 33%, despite the workload, and on top of this there are the workload increases that have happened. It has health and safety implications. We see that in the well-being survey that was carried out by DCU. It needs to be reviewed.

The massive initiative overload in the past few years has contributed to this, along with the natural conditions of the cost of living and the price of getting the PME with everything. There are a lot of problems. By the way, I think it is a very crazy system that we educate and pay for teachers right through primary, secondary and third level and educate them to a high degree, only for other jurisdictions to avail of that expertise without the costs of the training. It is not a good or sustainable system and we should not be letting it happen.

I agree. In regard to posts of responsibility, when I first started teaching, everybody had one and you had one subject. That was your post of responsibility. When I moved school and got another post of responsibility, you were over three subjects. On the workload, they are giving these posts but they are also doubling and tripling the workload. I will come back.

I am speaking here as a former teacher at secondary level, and as a former member of the TUI. I taught for a long number of years. I am old enough to remember the two-tier system after 2011 and how horrendous that was on staff. I also remember the cuts in posts of responsibility, which had an extraordinary impact. I recall myself and others voluntarily doing the duties that a postholder should be doing, just to ensure the school ran safely but that can lead to a certain level of resentment too. It is disappointing to know that we are still not back to those levels. I know the moratorium was lifted and there were posts added. That was brilliant and helped the schools but we need to get back to where the situation was pre-2011.

I will expand a little bit on a couple of issues. Everything the witnesses have said I agree with. Mr. Quinn touched a little bit on data as to why people are emigrating. Is there much data on it? Some young people may decide they want to go for different reasons - for the experience of seeing another country, good weather or whatever it is. Some go for financial reasons. Would Mr. Quinn have data on whether the majority, if they had the option, would not go, if there was an option to work here at a decent level to be able to get a mortgage and so forth?

We do not have data around that specifically. It may be something we as unions can go out to the teachers and try to capture but in regard to centrally located or departmental level data, that has not, to my mind, been collated.

The Deputy may recall that a former Minister went out and had a town hall meeting in Dubai. It was very well attended and they made it very clear what they wanted to come home, which are some of the things we have raised. They wanted to return to a permanent job with full hours straight away. They wanted to have incremental credit. They made it very clear. That was a meeting held by the Minister out there at the time. We do not have the figures but I would say a large proportion of them want to come home. They do come home. We have a lot of people coming home at a certain time but they feel, a bit like what we experienced in 2011, that they are not being treated well. Somebody might come back from a system like that running in England, with all of its problems, and they get incremental credit. They might be coming back from a system where, as I said earlier, they have learned a lot, and they are not getting credit. All of this experience goes into the melting pot of a school and it is all value.

There is a study being worked through the Teaching Council called Teachers' Professional Journeys: The First Decade. It is a longitudinal study that is going to take teachers and study them in the first ten years of their careers. That will tell an awful lot. It will track these people, whether they are here teaching or doing something else. It will take people who graduated or joined the Teaching Council register in a certain year and find where they are now. The results of that are going to be really important because it is very difficult for unions or other groups to pick up on why people are abroad. Sometimes people might not always tell you but I think that study will.

While we do not have data, we definitely have loads of anecdotal reasons as to why people go. You will always get somebody in the earlier part of their career with a young spirit of adventure. That is always going to happen and you will always have that slippage but there are people who leave because of a lack of opportunity or promotion prospects. I mentioned earlier on that people see it as a way out of their debts and so on. I am interested in the reverse of the Deputy's question. Almost more important are the data on why people are not coming back. I can give the Deputy one example of a couple we dealt with last year, a husband and wife, one of whom was a principal and the other of whom was teaching in a school in Dubai. If they came back as a couple, they would be starting at the bottom of the scale here in Ireland, both of them, so there is no attraction there.

I think the incremental credit, regardless of what school they are in, is very important. If that was allowed, it could make a huge difference.

Last week we were given the impression that was being allowed in most cases but the witnesses are saying that is not the situation.

In any case it is a nuisance.

Basically, the criterion was that the curriculum must be recognised by the state they are teaching in.

The professional master of education, PME, qualification is over two years. When I did my teacher training it was one year and it was known as the HDip at the time. I felt the teaching element of that was where we got our experience. I am not saying the college part was not important, but one continues to learn as we go on to teach from experience. It certainly did not cost anything like the figures it costs now. It was one year, and the student could then go out and teach. It could be shortened, or looked at, or at least if pay could be introduced for the teaching element, it would make a huge difference.

In its current configuration it is a luxury we simply cannot afford. It needs to be reformed and redeveloped in whatever shape. We have already touched on perhaps payment in the second year is an option, or maybe just go back to the one year PME.

I agree, and other people have said that. Another concern is the nearly 9,000 people unqualified being paid. I presume it is not people who are out of the field; it is people who are not qualified as teachers who are substituting. What areas are they coming from? Is that known? Would it take much for people to upskill if they have a degree in something else but are not qualified teachers?

At primary level the demand is to have somebody standing in front of the class because we do not want to be in a situation where schools are not able to accommodate the children that are there. We are currently drawing from people who have no teaching qualification whatsoever. Included in those may be teachers who are in first or second year of bachelor of education, BEd degree. They would be counted in that category. In today's world that is not a sufficient or good enough provision. A lot of those teachers are in special schools and that is particularly unfortunate because the people who need the most qualifications are the people working in special schools. That is the situation at primary level.

We are going to have a second round of questions now and there may be some more committee members joining us. I am up first.

I have a couple of questions for the INTO. Last Saturday I was in Sligo for a teacher wedding and had the chance to catch up with all my friends from Mary Immaculate College. Those people are established and are years in the primary school system. However, when the inevitable teaching chat comes up one thing they all bemoan is the Croke Park hours. I have brought this up in the past with the Minister and I have brought it up in the Dáil at various times. The answer always given is that it is for the union and the Department to negotiate and that there are rounds of negotiation.

As I looked around the table at that wedding in Sligo, I saw the most talented bunch of people in front of me who do a huge amount in their schools such as leading out on sport, arts, music and other extracurricular stuff. They were doing this for years before the Croke Park conditions came in. Indeed, if we look at the riches of Ireland in terms of the GAA, Irish dancing, Irish music, Cumann na mBunscol, Corn na nÓg and all of these structures are populated largely by primary teachers and they are also carried out at second level. The only ask these people have is that the Department and the Minister first, and the union have their back on this and that those hours they give every day on the week are counted towards something and not excluded from Croke Park hours. Has the union a position on this?

Yes, we are currently in negotiation with the Department to get additional hours recognised other than on a whole-school basis and that it would be stated in the interim agreement for post-primary on a high-trust basis. That means teachers could be trusted and if they said they were doing something school related, whether it was Cumann na mBunscol or other professional learning they were doing that it would be recognised. We got dates this morning for negotiations on that.

It is so easy to see. If we pass any school in the country, urban or rural, there is a ball being kicked, there are kids coming out at 4 o'clock with tin whistles and folders under their arms, there are teachers staying back after school and a range of activities are being offered. I know in my locality a baking club and a chess are club offered; there are about ten activities. That would not be seen anywhere, and it is all teachers giving up their time with none of those hours recognised. Stripping away politics and the teaching profession, the activities we really pride ourselves on in the country are national sports, our music, our dance and our arts and that is largely led by teachers day in, day out. There are clubs, but it starts at school level. I would love to see the union really strongly represent that.

There is possibly a mechanism also at second level, but I am certainly familiar with it at primary level, involving teacher exchanges. When teachers graduate from college, for many it is inconsequential where they will be based because they are thrilled to get a job. Many will go to Dublin if they can afford it, they will move into an apartment with a few friends and get set up. As the years go on and they move into their twenties, hopefully they will meet someone, and a relationship will form, and they might want to transfer to Mayo or Sligo. They end up doing crazy journeys because they may get married, have kids, and suddenly they are doing these crazy journeys each day.

The exchange mechanism requires a perfect match in the sense that two schools must agree, teachers must agree and boards of management must approve it. If, say, I wanted to teach in Kildare and another teacher wanted to teach in Clare, it requires double agreement, as one of the teachers may have permanency but the other may not. Eventually both posts would have to be resigned and the whole process would go back to the very start with both as new entrants.

Is that something the union is looking at? That is so demoralising for people. I had a colleague who was travelling from Limerick to Kilmaine, County Mayo and back every day to teach. They were having their breakfast on their lap in the car - a bowl of porridge- trying to drive two hours and 15 minutes. It was crazy. That is another thing we have not discussed today.

I have spent quite a number of hours, days or weeks in my professional time trying to achieve some form of teacher exchange that would work. The will is not there, not so much at Department level, but at management body level in the primary schools and the issue of the bishops as the patrons of a diocese is the insurmountable one.

We put in a proposal for reallocation that was not just about the personal aspect, but as also a way of reducing the green footprint because people are commuting for hours.

It is crazy.

Yet all they have to do is agree the swap. However, the Cathaoirleach is dead right. Everybody must agree, and it must be a perfect switch. The Department did not object to it, nor did the then Minister, Deputy Foley, but the management bodies objected because they wanted to have the final say on what was happening. That must be the future. I know a construction teacher who wanted to move to Galway who is no longer teaching and is now a quantity surveyor because he had to get another job to more. We are losing them because they have transferable skills. All it would have taken was if he had been able to get a swap.

We have principals in the commuter belt in counties Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow and Louth, coming down to County Clare and places like that. They could be principals, and they give up everything in terms of seniority. If it works successfully for both teachers, both schools and both boards of management for three, four or five years and it is being renewed, why should it not be formalised and made a forever arrangement?

Last week we were also talking about teacher burnout and the stresses in schools. The answer I got was more about the supports available after such a thing happens. I would love to see what the union's members want to see to prevent that from happening because stress and burnout do not happen overnight. It is a horrible, slow process that continues for a long time that then reaches the point where it is very difficult.

From being in schools over decades at this stage I can see there is an increase in workload that is not necessarily only to do with the teaching and learning part of the job, but also to do with a plethora of other things. The TUI submission referred to the communication of parents with teachers and asked how unions can tell the teachers to not answer emails at 9 o'clock at night. That example was used. It is not just one thing; there are so many other things happening in schools. Last week it was thrown out that teachers have the summer off, but they are not having a holiday if they have reached the summer but are so tired that it takes weeks to recover and are then planning for the following year.

People who do not work in schools do not realise the level of work that it is required to be a teacher. It is not just for the days the person is in the classroom; there is also the planning, correcting and being available for all the other activities. What would the union's members like to see that is not in order to fix it when it is broken, but to prevent it starting in the first place? As we know, early intervention is the most important factor.

Overload in workload is huge in our schools. We have curriculum, teacher learning, as the Deputy said, continuous new initiatives and all of the other things we need to do because other schools are doing them such as the numerous flags seen hanging outside many schools. Everything is so worthwhile but that is all workload. It is so important to schools. Work-life balance is huge. I do not know many teachers who will ignore messages and emails in the evenings because they are concerned about the children. Parents do it because they work during the day and they have to make contact at some time.

The Deputy mentioned posts of responsibility. There is an overload. The workload is huge. People are not applying for posts of responsibility as much now. There is not as much competition for posts of responsibility. The duties are spread and huge.

They are vast.

There is a list of duties being advertised. It all needs to come back more to teaching and learning and posts of responsibilities where people are properly encouraged and supported to draw up all the new policies and plans we need for so many different things. Managing workload in some way is key to managing the stress of the work environment.

I attended the DCU event for teacher occupational well-being research this morning - it is still going on I left to join here – where it identified major stresses on the teaching community. A total of 5% of teachers reckon their mental health is very poor and 23% reckon it is poor. If we add those two together, 28%, which is more than a quarter of teachers, reckon their mental health is poor because of stresses in the job. It was called burnout and the reasons for burnout were listed. We are in a digital age.

Teachers are at times not applying for posts of responsibility because there is too much work associated with them. This is why we are calling for the return of a proper level of posts of responsibility because many hands make lighter work. If there were more posts in the system, there would be less work.

As for initiative overload, if we look at last year in the post-primary sector-----

Mr. Curley might be very brief as we have gone way over time.

-----we have an accelerated senior cycle where teachers have not been communicated with. When communication is poor, stress levels go through the roof.

I thank Mr. Curley. I call Senator Shane Curley.

We are coming back to a similar topic. When it comes to retention of teachers, is there a struggle with leaving certificate reform with the additional assessment components and the biggest class sizes in Europe? Is it feasible to actually implement them? That is my basic question. Is it going to lead to a falloff of teachers if we continue down the path we are going?

That overlaps succinctly with the previous question in terms of the additional components of assessment that are going to come down the line. It will ultimately lead to retention issues within the profession. It is all building to a work intensification. Instead of a summit of assessments at the end of a learning process, we are going to have built-in assessments along the cycle. That is going to lead to intensification. All of the causes leading to those issues around burnout are around time demands and lack of rewards for work undertaken. There is also that notion of lack of control. Teachers feel they are reacting to this initiative churn that is taking place, particularly in the junior cycle as previously mentioned, but also coming down the senior cycle. There is also a lack of core values within schools around fairness and equity. There is a mismatch of those values.

To go back to Deputy Cummins's point, there is no correlation between holidays and burnout; they are two very distinct things. The World Health Organization recognises that burnout is a very real thing. Just because people gets two weeks holidays at Christmas does not mean they are match fit thereafter.

Senator Curley referenced the leaving certificate redevelopment and retention of teachers. He is possibly aware that our second level colleagues in the TUI last year around this time called on the then Minister for Education to pause the project for a year. Unfortunately, that request fell on deaf ears. We are now in the initial rollout of the programme. There are nine subjects up and running since September. Our members tell us they are observing a creaking of the system with a science lab not ready or unable to cope for instance and so on. It is going to get worse as time progresses and as the difficulty and expanded requirements of those courses are rolled out.

Are the TUI and ASTI getting feedback on the issues predicted in the rollout of the reform?

I cannot speak for our colleagues but we certainly are. As the Senator knows, particularly with the larger subjects such as the science and business subjects and so on. Schools are doing the best they can but are ill-prepared and it shows.

The TUI was always in favour of additional assessment components but they had thank you very much to be meaningful and mark something not done by a written exam. The fact that some of these are being brought in on the cheap in terms of project work is causing problems. We have students worrying about the 40% and writing up the project and missing the content which is going to be part of the 60%. We may end up creating more stress. We need to think again about some of the additional assessment components. They need to be better.

The other problem or elephant in the room is we have AI project work. We are a third level union. Our third level members are moving away from project work. Project work assessed orally should be used, or project work assessed by an assessment task on a written exam. We have not taken any of that into account. We absolutely need to reform senior cycle and we are in favour of that, but we have possibly missed the boat on certain things and we need to start looking at what AI can do. That is a big elephant in the room.

On the AI, we sent a letter to the AI committee to examine the impact of AI on the education and exam system. We are aware and have discussed that. We are on that as well.

I hope they will do my cuntas míosúil for me someday.

Ms O'Connor mentioned extended and parental leave, planning and the difficulty with teachers covering leave. It reminded me of something very important to me, which is breastfeeding breaks. They were introduced a few years back. The WHO recommends that a mother breastfeeds her child until he or she is at least two years of age. I am a big supporter of extended breastfeeding and I availed of the breastfeeding breaks. I was the only teacher at the time who availed of them. We sorted it out and had cover. The SEN teacher came in and took my class while I took the break. It was fantastic but we were given these breaks with no cover. At the time, a couple of teachers were out on maternity leave. We could have been faced with five teachers breastfeeding, taking an hour each. That is the loss of a teacher a day. Where are the unions on that? Are they hearing from the principals? I hear from friends that some people are just not availing of these breaks and I try to encourage them. We need to avail of them or we are going to lose them. As teachers, we do not want our students to miss out and we do not want the additional pressure on our principals who then have to find cover. It is a bit of a catch-22. I would love to know, as I have not been in teaching for a while, what is the feedback on the ground from the principals? Are they making noise? I hope so.

We are absolutely in favour of breastfeeding breaks. We have had the two years for quite some time in the education system. One of the big problems in primary schools, which goes across all of this, is there is no time other than the time a teacher is standing in front of his or her class. That means there is no provision to collaborate with colleagues to take breastfeeding breaks. A teacher is always on from the time he or she goes in. There is no easy answer to that because a teacher needs to take herself out to do a breastfeeding break or express whatever it is.

We need to look at time in primary schools. Other jurisdictions have time built in for things like collaboration and professional development. They have time built into teachers' contracts. We do not have that. We will have to look at that, since it is a huge pressure in the system, and look after things like breastfeeding breaks. Primary schools are run on the basis that every teacher is sitting in front of his or her class every minute of every day. It is not sustainable.

We have the same problem with lack of time in post-primary education. Even if someone decides she wants to express milk, there is no place in any school unless it is a brand new school - I have seen ones with a little cupboard with a fridge in it but at least they have something - that is set up to do so. Many schools have nothing, so time and places where this can be done are not available in schools.

We need some education here. Some people are looking at it as if it is all about the parent getting time off. This is a right of the child as well. They forget that there is a child on the other side of this who has a right to all the benefits of two years' breastfeeding. The WHO makes it very clear that immunity goes up. We forget that there is a child receiving this time as well. We gave it because it was deemed a directive from Europe but we did not follow it through with all the back-up that was needed for it.

An awful lot of the issues we have talked about today come down to two things, namely, time and money. When we say "money", we mean lack of resources. You can nearly trace the issues of stress on teachers, retention and recruitment - their not wanting the job or to stay in the job - back to these two factors. As has been said very well there, there is not enough time provided to teachers for professional development and training. I talked about the senior cycle being rushed in without a full cohort being trained but still expected to teach the subjects. This is what contributing to stress. We need better resources and a proper system where it is not just time in front of a class but time for development.

There is a technical issue, as the nameplates are not working, so I will introduce members myself. They are Deputy Ryan O'Meara from Fianna Fáil and Senator Linda Nelson Murray of Fine Gael. I call Deputy O'Meara.

I apologise for arriving at this time. I had a question for the Taoiseach that ran on longer than I expected but I appreciate the witnesses' opening statements, which I got to read beforehand.

I will start with the INTO. Others might feed in afterwards. The INTO described the panel as the best option for short-term cover. This links to another question I will ask, but is it the best structure we have? Is there an alternative that the INTO would like to see? I encounter teachers every year coming up to school time who are stressing about panels and trying to understand them fully. It is a very difficult thing to explain to anyone. Knowing the panels around north Tipperary, which I represent, particularly the diocese of Killaloe, which is one I would be familiar with this year, it sounded like there were far more people on the panels than there were positions.

This leads on to my second question, which concerns where we are seeing shortages. Are they particularly prevalent in particular rural areas? We hear a lot of discussion about Dublin, the cost of living, housing, etc., but are there pockets of the country where we see the issues stand out more?

I will draw a distinction between two things. The panels to which we are referring in the submission are supply panels. Those are panels of teachers that are put together to provide short-term substitute cover within primary schools. The panels to which the Deputy is referring are the redeployment panels-----

Yes.

-----where a teacher who is surplus to requirements in his or her school is redeployed to other schools. Regarding teacher supply, recruitment and retention, to provide short-term substitute cover, the best thing to do is to give those teachers long-term contracts. If one gives a teacher a contract for a year, he or she is then available to substitute in schools around the place. The schools on the panel book him or her and he or she goes around and provides substitute cover. We believe that is the best answer to providing short-term substitute cover to ensure every child has a qualified primary school teacher every day.

The redeployment panels are a whole other issue but they do come into play in terms of teacher supply. We would say that there has to be a priority to redeploy teachers who are already in the system before other teachers are recruited into it.

I will pick up on the second part of the Deputy's question. The situation around panels is radically different at second level, in that we do not have the panel described by Ms O'Connor with regard to short-term cover. The Deputy was absent when I used an anecdote about what was on the radio this morning. Two principals, one from a DEIS school in Cork city and one in a fee-charging school in Dublin, are both struggling, so it is a national problem. It is as prevalent in Sligo and Carlow as it is in Dublin and Cork. The recruitment and retention crisis seems to stay with us. It is not going away any time soon.

The problem in post-primary education is not the same as in national schools where every teacher is the same. In post-primary schools, it is very subject-specific. We have a bigger gap in certain subjects like physics or Spanish graduates. There are certain graduates one cannot get for love nor money, so it is not an equal problem. One could pick some subjects and it is national; one cannot get a teacher in that subject. For a couple of years, we could not get home economics teachers at all anywhere.

We are glad to be training them at Mary Immaculate College in Thurles now.

Exactly. We are trying to solve the issue. We have to remember that we are at peak second level, with the largest ever number of students going through our second level schools. That will decrease, though, which is why we need to think about smaller class sizes going forward. One then takes an overall look at schools. We know there are pockets of schools, such as DEIS schools and special schools, that find it harder to recruit people. The Deputy is right, in that it is not equal, but it is very hard to analyse.

I welcome the witnesses. I will start by asking about some of the figures we are talking about. I do not know if the witnesses know that the Department was before the committee last week. I certainly got the sense of small percentages of vacancies at primary and secondary levels. When we asked about the granularity of that and the impact on individual schools, I certainly did not get a sense that the Department could relay a full picture to us. What are the witnesses' reflections on what they have been hearing from the Department about challenges in recruitment and retention? Will they comment on the granularity of it? I think somebody mentioned it in their opening statement.

Our view for many years has been that the Department is publicly minimising the problem. We can talk statistics all we want but the principal who was on the radio this morning - I am labouring the point - complaining about not being able to get mathematics teachers does not want the Department saying that the figures are grand. The students who are losing out in that school and many other schools do not want to hear that kind of construction on figures. We have been saying for years - we are not just saying it today - that the Department has been attempting to time out the crisis in anticipation of what Mr. Gillespie referred to about the bulge going through second level schools, the reducing figures, the demographics and so on. For the past number of years, we have published on more or less the same date in August the number of vacant posts on the educationposts.ie website. It is always hundreds, with schools opening within days. That is the reality on the ground. The Department can come in here and bandy figures all it wants. If there are 3% or 4% of vacancies in a school of 100 teachers, that is three or four classrooms with nobody in front of them.

Regarding post-primary education, schools are really good at absorbing the problem.

They should not do that, but they do, so instead of having 30 pupils in a class, there are two seats at the back, making 32. A school might lose a sub and not be able to recruit a home economics teacher. It does not want to tell everybody it cannot recruit a home economics teacher, but it has a PE teacher, so it suddenly makes PE a leaving certificate subject. That covers it up. We are very good at covering up the problem. The problem is there, it is just that we are covering it up by bigger class sizes, taking more pupils than we should, using timetable methodology to solve it, or replacing a subject with another subject, which reduces student choice.

I am not going to rehash it, but in the background document we prepared for the committee, we have given the results of surveys we have carried out over the last three years. We got those figures from the Department. They were relayed here at the committee last week and they were also given at a data day that the Department held. There is somewhat of a lack of transparency around those kinds of figure. The UNESCO study will have those figures in it as well, and we will be able to interrogate them a bit more. If the committee wants to see the impact on individual schools or across schools, it would be useful to look at those surveys that we have. We also ask how schools are covering the gaps Mr. Gillespie referred to, whether they are redeploying their special education teachers or employing people who are unqualified, and when have they gone without a sub or split a class. All that information is in the background document that we provided to committee.

It is proxy indicators we are looking at, I think, as a real indicator of what is actually happening here as opposed to the headline figures of posts filled. The types of indicator we should be looking at are vacancies, people operating outside of their training and substitute teachers. Is that right?

We need to dig down into the figures. We have an awful lot of student teachers who are not attending their second year professional master of education, PME, lectures because they think if they substitute in a school, they might get a job next year. We have subjects being replaced. There is a whole lot of stuff hiding what is going on.

Senator Nelson Murray is next and has four minutes. We will then squeeze in a third round of questions and I ask everyone to keep strictly to two minutes.

I was talking to a woman last week who asked me to help get her daughter home. I did not know if the daughter was off in jail, stuck for a passport or what it was. The mother was very upset that her daughter was teaching abroad. She wants to get her home but she cannot get the credits or come in on a system even though she has worked for years abroad. Do we know how many people we have abroad working? Have we plans to change the system? I am sorry if someone asked this already. Have we a plan to change the system so that they can get in on a level?

It has been mentioned that, at the end of every August going into September, there are a load of posts waiting to be filled. I cannot imagine the stress on principals trying to get that done. Is there a higher number in the DEIS and special education schools? What impact would that have on those children who might not be getting the teachers they need in September?

I will take the Senator's questions in reverse. I cannot give the Senator the exact numbers, but consistently over the last number of years, there have been over 400 posts vacant within a week of the schools opening. We do it that particular week every year just to have consistency.

Is there a breakdown of the figures?

It might not be too scientific, but what we often find is that principals will contact us. Somebody will have committed to a post but then moved elsewhere. Unfortunately, it is oftentimes from a DEIS school to a non-DEIS school. We hear that anecdotally; I do not have scientific stuff.

On the teaching abroad piece, this came up earlier. The issue is about teaching what is essentially non-state curricula in non-state schools over there. All three unions are very much across that and doing our best to get the Department to move on it.

Just to chime in on that, the Department said that there were 4,600 teachers domiciled and teaching abroad. That is increasing.

Just to speak directly to the shortages, we have very acute issues. It is more of an issue with large post-primary schools, particularly DEIS ones, but also in special schools and Gaelscoileanna. We surveyed our principals' and deputy principals' association. There are ongoing acute shortages in some subjects. First and foremost are shortages in maths teachers, with Irish teachers coming in second, but all the way down it is French, practical subjects, English teachers, biology, home economics, chemistry and art. It is absolutely across all the subjects. There is also this perception that it is only within urban settings that there is a shortage of teachers. The statistics show that it is both urban and rural.

Of the 4,600 teachers who are abroad, is there any idea of how many of them we would get home if we sorted out that package for them? I know Mr. Quinn cannot ring them all up and ask them.

What we have been experiencing with our members has to do with incremental credit. There is a wee bit of disparity between the groupings. Primary school teachers are entitled to incremental credit. However, post-primary teachers, particularly those who are teaching in a private school setting, are not entitled to get that, so they are coming back to start at point 1 of the scale, which is kind of incredible.

We are hearing there are 4,600 abroad and 400 or 500 vacancies come the end of August. It seems like something that we really could be getting sorted. It has been going on for so long. We might get that woman's daughter home soon, will we?

We have had assurances, but we have not had any delivery by the Department of education.

On data coming from the Department, I know in a lot of schools that PME and student teachers are used to plug the gaps. There are put in front of classes and schools are now becoming teaching schools where they take on PME students specifically for the purpose that they will have a body to put in front of the class.

We will move to our final round of questions, with two minutes per member. We will all watch the clock. I will ask my question of the INTO just so we can get this covered. When we had the Department of education here, I asked what March 2026 would bring, because that will mark four years since the war in Ukraine began and four years since we had an extra 18,200 students in our school system at primary and secondary levels. They all have temporary protection status. It gets rolled over annually by the European Union each March. If we are to believe all the noise we are hearing on world news, there is some peace deal in the offing. That is for another day, another debate. My point is that Irish schools have shown incredible flexibility. I recall one class in Clare initially being set up in a cloakroom. They kitted it out, put posters on the wall with Blu Tack and it became a classroom. There was incredible flexibility. Nearly all of our allocations of English as an additional language, EAL, teachers across the system are tied into this. Staffing levels at the end of September were determined by this. Some schools have half of their student cohorts made up by Ukrainians. The Department told us there would be no cliff edge if the war and all of this ended, there would be stability in schools and we would not see a collapse of all of these supports. I am not quite sure I believe there will be no cliff edge. It seems a bit far-fetched. What engagement have our guests had from the Department?

I do not think I would be able to give an assurance that there would be no cliff edge. I do know that the Ukrainian students are somewhat more dispersed than they were at the start. In Clare, there was a huge concentration because a lot of people were living in hotels in on the west coast. They are now more dispersed.

There is a general issue now for small schools, particularly in the west of Ireland, in relation to the retention of posts because of dropping numbers. I am not au fait with what might be offered in terms of the international protection. What I do know is that numbers falling in small schools, thereby putting small schools at risk, is a situation that really needs to be looked at and managed. We have the small schools pilot project, which allows small schools to cluster together to support each other. That is really important.

On teacher burnout, stress and all of those things, I noted today that the INTO expressed anger at not being consulted with regards to the assessment of need. It is not exactly on topic for today, but I think it is part of that endless amount of new things that we are talking about.

I have had a lot of communication today from principals and teachers in my constituency and further afield about this. What are Ms O'Connor's thoughts on it?

Primary teachers care deeply about special education provision and anything that seems to touch on change or reduction or whatever else really strikes a nerve with all of our members. The main thing we are very irritated about in respect of that announcement is that we had no flagging of it whatsoever. It will impact on schools doing assessments of need because teachers do part of the assessment, namely, the educational element of it. The second part then is about the giving out of resources. Fundamentally, the Deputy has put her finger on it. It does touch on recruitment and retention and burnout, because there is an endless blizzard of announcements and initiatives by not only the Minister for education. We had the Minister for justice coming out with one about domestic violence. Now we have the Minister for children coming out with one on assessments of need. These are all just coming at teachers. It is not a good time to be making announcements.

No, I agree.

It is coming up to Christmas and everybody is up to their eyes with Christmas plays and whatever else and this stuff is coming on top of them. It has been a long term. I think this is crucial in this discussion about teacher recruitment and retention. If teachers do not feel valued, they will not stay in the profession.

Yes, like any profession.

I have asked all the questions I wanted to ask. I particularly want to thank the TUI and ASTI, my nominating bodies. I am proud to represent them in these Houses. Is there anything people feel that they have not had a chance to mention in relation to retention and recruitment? That is an open question.

The previous speaker touched on the issue of initiative overload and the blizzard, as Ms O'Connor called it, of initiatives that comes the way of schools and of teachers. There does not appear to be any co-ordination or coherence between the Department of education, or even structures within the Department, and the wider bodies such as the SEC and the NCCA and so on. Often they are competing for time to make an announcement on the same day.

We have talked a lot about burnout as if it is some sort of item that is detached. It is there but we are skirting around it. I want to talk about the consequences of burnout. For teachers, what it looks like is first and foremost physical and emotional exhaustion. It is typified or described as an erosion of the feeling of self and a covert process of psychological erosion. Not only that, but one of the key factors that stem from burnout is this notion of depersonalisation, whereby people have a lack of empathy and they start to feel or care less. In a profession like teaching, which is predicated on us being invested in our students, that is very damaging. The heavy workload is having a direct correlation whereby teachers are starting to feel less for their students. We need to do something in the most stringent terms to rescue this situation.

I want to go back to special education for a moment. I am on the board of a special education school. I see one of the findings is that 65% of schools have to redeploy a special education teacher to cover for the absence of a class teacher. How does one even contemplate doing that? I see the vulnerability of children in the school that I work with and how fabulous they are, but also how much they need the teachers who knows them and works with them every day.

There was reference to the fact the shortage of teachers continues to disproportionately impact children with special education needs and that 24 of those long-term posts in special education are unfilled. Again, the impact on those children is huge. Are we actively doing anything on that side of things to encourage more teachers into that? I assume they are also getting burnt out, and maybe even more so with the pressure that is put on them.

When we talk about special classes or children with special education needs, principals do not have to contemplate it. They do not have a choice. If there is a class of 20 or super-sized classes of 30 or 35 to a room, there is not a choice.

Or in special education with a class of six.

They have to have a teacher. They cannot keep splitting classes, so there is not a choice. We would see the answer to this as being to extend the supply panels. In my area we have three teachers on a supply panel covering 28 schools, so that does not give a lot of leeway.

Does Ms Horan think we could get more on there by offering them one-year contracts?

Yes, absolutely, on the supply panels.

It should be acknowledged by the committee that it is heartbreaking for local management to make decisions like that, and we can only imagine what the consequences are for the child.

I want to address the issue of pressure on school principals. A point was made earlier about the bulge in secondary school numbers at the moment. When do we expect those numbers to peak and start to reduce?

We are at peak now. The peak is over this couple of years. Theoretically, it should have been last year but now we have more people registered to do the leaving certificate than ever this year. This is the peak, the highest numbers that are in-----

Is there a significant drop after that?

No, it is very gradual. There is a little bit of a dip because of the change in the four- to five-year-olds starting secondary school. Then it goes down gradually for a while and there is a sudden drop.

The reason I ask is that I brought up a school here recently. It has a school building for 600 with a current population of about 930. The school has had approval for a massive extension for the last four years. If we are experiencing a significant drop soon enough in terms of the time frame, does the Department think it will be able to get away without providing all of the secondary school buildings?

No, because if it was planning properly, it is all about building classrooms. Ideally, we would build the classrooms and then when the demographic increase slows, we would use the same number of classrooms but instead of having 30 pupils in them we would have 20. That is what we need to do. We would plan for it and be like the rest of Europe, with smaller class sizes for the bespoke education that is needed. We should absolutely continue to spend, but the Deputy is right in that there is an inordinate delay.

I am not for a second suggesting that they should delay it because I am trying to get a school built in my own area, but it was just one case that occurred to me. I am dealing with quite a lot of secondary schools and one of the answers that came back that day, which I appreciate was genuine, was around timetabling and making the best use of timetables. In a school for 600 pupils that has 930 in it, a principal can only do so much and that is an awful lot of pressure. I thank the witnesses for those answers.

Can I make a quick point? I am conscious of the plethora of political heads that I am meeting here today and I would ask that thought be given to ensure that it is not dissipated when it comes, and that the pupil-teacher ratio be reduced as a result.

Okay, point understood.

I want to follow on from that point about the information the Department provides, either publicly or through questioning. TG4 has good information but it has to get it through a freedom of information, FOI, request. Would the witnesses agree that granular data on vacancies, the employment of teachers at the unqualified rate and at substitution should be published on a regular basis?

They might also comment on the importance of full hours and permanency. There was reference to access to mortgages for people coming back. Perhaps the witnesses will comment on full hours and permanency more generally for workers.

Absolutely, the data should be published, but moreover, the data should be used properly to plan. That is the bit that is missing. There is a bit of a focus on providing us with numbers and proving that they did this, that and the other, but the use of the data really needs to improve.

I completely agree that it should be published, but they need to drill down into it. For unqualified teachers, they need to identify who is totally unqualified. They need to ask whether we are depending completely on student teachers, who are allowed to be registered under a new Part 5, and they are being used. We need to drill down into who these people are and what they are doing, such as long-term subbing or whatever. There is absolutely a need to drill down into these figures, and using them as overarching figures covers up a lot of these problems. We do need to do that.

On permanency, yes, absolutely. We need permanent jobs. I was very lucky. I came out of college and I got a permanent job on day one. This was mainly because my subject was scarce so I was very lucky. However, I was under no pressure then because I had a permanent job. It is amazing then, when I saw people coming in after me as things got tighter and tighter, the amount of pressure that was on them. They did not know if they were going to renewed the next year whereas I never had that fear from the day I started until the day I left. I did 25 years in the school and I never had to worry about that because I was permanent from day one. It does build you with confidence and you are a better teacher for it because you are willing to do other things. You are not doing things just to prove yourself or to make sure you get the job next year.

Okay, that concludes the questions. Mr. Gillespie has clarified he was a teacher before becoming a general secretary. Just out of interest, were Ms O'Connor and Mr. Christie also teachers before taking up their roles?

Yes, for 28 years.

Great.

Yes, in Monaghan, in Senator Tully's constituency.

I was a physics teacher.

I should know this. I always presumed the general secretary was a separate role leading out the organisation but it is good to hear all three of the witnesses come from the classroom environment as well. I sincerely thank each and every one of the witnesses. There are always time constraints in these meetings and I am sorry if we had to keep things moving. Their opening statements were very valuable, beneficial and informative to the body of work we are doing. I thank the witnesses' three respective organisations for everything they are doing in the field of education. I sincerely thank the members of the committee, as always, for their engagement. This is our final meeting of 2025 so I want to thank all of the committee's secretarial team. They do an inordinate amount of work. The rules of the meeting means they are silent while the meeting is on but, by God, are they working behind the scenes pulling all of this together. It is hugely appreciated, as is the technical team. I wish everyone a very happy Christmas.