Teaching perks for politicians set to end

TEACHERS elected to the next Dáil and Seanad will no longer be entitled to build up their teacher pensions while serving in the Oireachtas.

The Government has also decided that TDs and senators will no longer have the option of returning to their jobs after 10 years or moving up the salary scale for teachers during their absence.

The move follows the ending in 2009 of the system that allowed TDs and senators on career breaks from teaching to keep the difference between their salary and the cost of a replacement teacher to their school.

The payments varied, depending on the point the Oireachtas member was at on the 25-year teachers’ salary scale (which they continued to go up each year even while not teaching) and the comparative experience of their replacement.

More than €800,000 was paid in the 10 years to the end of 2007 to more than 20 TDs and senators who benefited from this arrangement, which has been in place since the 1970s.

But it is only in a letter to school managers this week that the Department of Education outlines how other benefits are now to come to an end for members of the profession elected to Leinster House from the start of the next Dáil and Seanad.

This follows a Government decision which now removes the option to return to teaching after 10 years, to end incremental credit for teaching service while a member of the Oireachtas and to end the ability to accrue pensions from the Oireachtas and teaching at the same time.

The 2009 register of TDs’ interests shows 20 Dáil members from Government and opposition benches who are teachers or retired teachers. Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin and his deputy Mary Hanafin are both second-level teachers but declared that they have not been receiving any income from those posts.

Joe Behan, the independent TD elected for Fianna Fáil in Wicklow in 2007, asked the department in September 2009 to discount whatever time he serves in the Oireachtas for teacher pension purposes.

Meanwhile, the universities’ umbrella body has rejected recent suggestions that academic freedom is under threat from reforms proposed under the Croke Park public service pay agreement. The Irish Universities Association said that the review of academic contracts being undertaken is not an attack on tenure and that it is reasonable to set minimum standards in respect of attendance by academic staff.