Education Minister Joe McHugh promised primary teachers today that “full consideration” will be given to settling outstanding pay inequality issues.

It follows yesterday’s announcement that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DEPER) has agreed to address matters that remain unresolved following the signing of the current public service pay deal last year.

Teacher unions have kept up a sustained campaign for the full reversal of pay cuts imposed on new entrants after 2011, and outgoing INTO general secretary Sheila Nunan said initiative announced yesterday would get them “over the finishing line”.

Mr McHugh was addressing delegates at the annual conference of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO), his first time to speak at a teacher union conference as minister.

In contrast to frosty receptions that several of his predecessors had to deal with at these conferences since pay cuts were introduced in 2011,  the  mood was cordial.

The minister was applauded several times by delegates, not only on his pay promise, but as he went through several items on the INTO wish list.

He included a pledge to look at the possibility of improving the pupil teacher ratio in small schools and further progress on improving the grant paid to schools to cover day to day running costs.

For years, ministers arriving at this conference were met by  angry groups of newly-qualified teachers, yellow t-shirts, carrying placards demanding pay equality.

This year, the yellow t-shirts were worn by  a stream of emigrant teachers, working mainly in the Middle East,  who lined the minister’s path into the conference hall.

This year the message was different.  They represented the more than 6,000 Irish teachers working around the world, mainly in the Middle East, many of whom want to come home, but say there are obstacles. Their placards   said simply,  “UAE 4 years” or “Dubai 2 Years”

In the course of his speech, Mr McHugh acknowledged their presence and thanked them for “fighting on behalf” of emigrant teachers.

He said that the issue over pay inequality was one of the ”major barriers” to teachers returning to work in Ireland and repeated his view that it was “unfinished business. “

Mr McHugh said he  was a conscious that, in its August 2018 Report, the Public Service Pay Commission proposed that the parties to the, current public service pay deal,  Public Service Stability Agreement,  should give consideration to putting arrangements in place to allow for the adequacy of current pay arrangements, more generally, to be fully examined.

“The Commission was clear that this might be done at an appropriate time, and without compromising the stability of the public service pay bill.

“On the issue of new entrant salary scales, I know that the INTO has outstanding issues of concern. These outstanding matters will be given full consideration” he said.

He said it would happen either in the context of any pay review mechanism agreed between DEPER and the Public Services committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions,  or in the context of the next round of pay talks, as provided for in yesterday’s s announcement.

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