Sir, – Micheál Martin says that the provision of additional payments to teachers and nurses (and, no doubt, other public servants) working in Dublin would be “very, very challenging” (News, April 17th). I think he’s right – and I suspect “very, very challenging” means “not a chance”.
Aodh O’Connor, a school principal in Dublin, called for the introduction of a Dublin weighting to allow public servants to work in our capital city (Letters, April 12th). This was supported by the INTO at its recent conference. The idea has obvious attractions – but who would dare to identify allowances which would recognise the differences in housing costs in Dublin, Cork, Mullingar and Belmullet or indeed within each of these areas, however they are defined?
Liz Farrell is president of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland. She wrote a lengthy opinion piece on teacher recruitment and retention (“Recruitment and retention of teachers must be tackled”, Opinion & Analysis, April 11th). She identified the availability and affordability of accommodation as having “a massively negative impact on teaching”. She went on to list a number of “effective measures” which would immediately ease the crisis.
Intriguingly, an allowance for teachers in areas with high accommodation costs was not one of them. Rather the “effective measures” are those which would offer additional income and increased pensions to teachers regardless of where they live and teach.
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I suspect the Government may choose to take the “once bitten, twice shy” approach on this one. Even if a system of allowances acceptable to the teacher unions could be found, which I doubt, it would surely be only a matter of time before the unions took the highest allowance as a given and mounted a campaign for its extension to every teacher in Ireland.
When the country was on its knees, teacher unions accepted a lower pay scale for new entrants to the profession to protect the terms and conditions of those inside the tent. The Government of the day kept its side of the bargain. But the unions ran a successful campaign against “different pay for the same work”. Minister for Finance Michael McGrath and Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe are unlikely to forget. – Yours, etc,
PAT O’BRIEN,
Dublin 6.
Sir, – The Tánaiste believes it would be “very challenging” for the Government to agree to the provision of allowances for teachers and nurses working in Dublin. I don’t recall ever hearing of any such difficulty when setting travel and accommodation allowance rates for politicians. So there they have a ready-made template which they could use for the time being while they struggle to overcome the challenge: a teacher or nurse living less than 25km from place of work would get €9,000 per annum, or €25,295 per annum if living between 25 and 60km from work, just like our TDs. – Yours, etc,
SEAN O’BYRNE,
Sallins,
Co Kildare.