Provision of Dublin allowance for teachers and nurses would be ‘very, very challenging’, Tánaiste says

The provision of additional payments to teachers and nurses working in Dublin in order to address problems with recruitment and retention would be “very, very challenging” for the Government to agree to, Micheál Martin has said.

The Tánaiste said the Government was aware of the challenge facing key staff in the education and health sectors as they compete for housing in the Dublin area amid shortages of available accommodation and high rents and would engage with unions on the issue, but that addressing the issue through pay would be difficult.

Asked about the proposal in relation to both teachers and nurses, Mr Martin said “we do acknowledge the challenge of residing near the school that you are working in the Dublin region given the impact of house prices and the anecdotal evidence that people are moving to schools further away from the capital as opportunities arise but it is very, very challenging to come forward with a pay framework would respond to that,” he said.

Rather, he said, the Government would seek to provide other general supports that would help with affordability.

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“I think there are broader measures we can take in respect of which we’ve taken in the last budget and the cost-of-living package around the tax credit for renters, for example,” said Mr Martin at the Fianna Fáil 1916 commemoration at Arbour Hill in Dublin on Sunday.

The issue of an additional payment to teachers and some other public sector employees working in Dublin was raised in the past week when delegates at the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation conference in Killarney voted to instruct the union’s executive to negotiate for the payment of such an allowance.

Responding to the Mr Martin’s comments on Sunday, INTO general secretary John Boyle said “such proposals are not without precedent, only recently the government agreed to support student nurses with financial support for their accommodation costs in Dublin, as a response to an ongoing recruitment crisis in that sector.

“An average of 1,200 classes per day in primary and special schools did not have a teacher between September and December of last year, with the vast majority of these vacancies in high cost high rent areas. Something has to be done,” he said.

Unions have traditionally been wary of the idea however, fearing it might cause division within their own ranks, but there has been growing frustration among both teachers and nurses over the cost of housing, particularly in Dublin, where many say they simply cannot afford to live and where there are large numbers of vacancies in both the health and education sectors.

Separately, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has called for the provision of accommodation for staff being recruited to work at the new national children’s hospital in central Dublin, and has warned that the rollout of services at the facility will inevitably be delayed if the issue is not addressed as it will be impossible to hire the nurses required.

Housing is likely to feature in talks on a new public sector pay deal which are expected to get under way in the coming months. The current agreement, Building Momentum, runs out at the end of the year. It was extended last year when pay increases worth 6.5 per cent over two years were agreed.

These will fall significantly short of inflation over the period but were endorsed in ballots of the roughly 370,000 workers impacted in the context of commitments by Government to a range of cost-of-living supports and the restoration to workers of additional hours many public sector employees were obliged to work under the 2013 Haddington Road agreement,

There has been a good deal of talk from the union side in recent weeks about any replacement deal having to provide pay increases that at least match inflation, with Kevin Callinan, general secretary of public sector union Fórsa and Ictu president, saying last week that it must “make good the shortfall in pay against inflation” but he made it clear too that the issue of pay will again be discussed in the wider context of tax and other Government measures for workers, including in relation to housing.

Some preliminary discussions regarding the new deal have taken place, but it is understood that formal talks may not get under way until the end of the summer.