‘Very difficult’ to keep schools open during dispute - Bruton

It is going to be very difficult to keep schools open next month after second level teachers who are members of the ASTI union withdraw from supervision and substitution duties, the Minister for Education Richard Bruton has said.

Members of the ASTI are scheduled to stop carrying out supervision and substitution roles in schools from November 7th.

Separately, the union is also to stage seven days of strikes between late October and early December in protest at lower pay rates for recently-recruited teachers.

In an interview on Sunday, Mr Bruton said the ASTI had refused a request from the Government for time to recruit other personnel to carry out these roles and to permit school principals to supervise such appointents before they withdraw from supervision and substitution duties.

“It is going to be very difficult, in effect, to keep the schools open.”

“The principal is the CEO of the organisation. Even if we get people in, if the CEO is not instructing how they are to be deployed, or what they are to do or to ensure that the children are safe in those times, it will be very difficult to do that.”

Speaking on RTÉ's This Week programme the Minister said it would be up to individual school boards of management to decide whether schools should have to close on health and safety grounds.

Meanwhile the Department of Education has invited the ASTI to attend new talks next week.

Already the union was scheduled to meet with the department on a separate row over junior cycle reform, however it is likely that a wider agenda will now be proposed to cover lower entrant pay and supervision and substitution issues.

The Minster said on Sunday that a deal accepted recently by other teaching unions had gone a substantial way towards closing a pay gap between teachers who were taken on in recent years and those in place before the economic crash.

However he acknowledged that a pay differential of about €1,800 remained.

Mr Bruton maintained that people recruited across the whole public service in recent years - and not just in teaching - had been taken on on lesser terms.

He said the issue of the remaining pay gap for recently qualified teachers could be addressed in negotiations on a successor to the Lansdowne Road agreement which would start on the back of the Government’s new public service pay commission.

Mr Bruton said a substantial deal was on the table for newly-qualifed teachers. He said this would mean teachers recruited this September would receive an increase of €4,600 by January 2018, a rise of 15 per cent.

He said for anewly-qualified teacher recruited last September, the deal would be worth €6,700 by January 2018, an increase of 22 per cent.

“There is real money on the table to help resolve what has been at the heart of this dispute - a concern about newly-qualified teachers.”

The figures quoted by the Minister represent the terms of the deal reached by his department several weeks ago with both the TUI and INTO unions as well as other rises under the Lansdowne Road accord. This deal was conditional on these groups accepting the Lansdowne Road accord and accepting some reform measures.

The ASTI has rejected the Lansdowne Road agreement.