Retiring teachers to cost €212m this year

Teachers retiring at the end of February will walk away with average lump sum payments of €97,000, according to Department of Education figures.

The estimated 1,600 teachers who have applied for the deal will also receive annual pensions of €32,300.

The total pay-off bill for the first year will be close to €212m, with many of the teachers being rehired as the department struggles to fill resulting vacancies.

This relates to primary, secondary, comprehensive and VEC teachers retiring between December and the end of February.

Lump sum pay-offs for teachers alone will amount to €159m.

By the lunchtime deadline yesterday, there were 7,710 applications to retire by the end of February across the public sector.

These include:

* 3,500 from the health sector;

* 2,000 from education — of which 1,600 are teachers;

* 1,000 from the civil service;

* 730 from local authorities;

* 298 from the gardaí;

* 192 from the Defence Forces.

Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin said there was no avoiding the huge numbers all leaving at such short notice because of contractual arrangements.

“Many people have given three months notice and those targets are factored in and are planned for. There will be many who have given their notice in today.

“We’re going to plan for this. Managers have to manage. There will be the full apparatus of Croke Park to redeploy and to do this in a coherent way. We’re talking about 7,000 people out of 300,000. We need to do things differently and better,” he told RTÉ.

There have been reports of a likely collapse of key public services as a result of the loss of so many staff by Feb 29.

Last week, consultants in two of the country’s largest maternity hospitals raised fears that the number of midwives choosing to retire early could lead to a crisis in maternity services.

Public service sources dismissed what they termed unnecessary “hysteria”.

“The portrayal of this as the loss of vibrant, go-getting staff is a little bit skewed,” said one source, noting that the scheme was aimed at those near retirement who were mostly in managerial roles and not frontline services.

However, Dr Eddie Molloy, a management consultant and director of Advanced Organisation, said the public would be badly served when the process was completed.

He said it should take five to 10 years to take out those kinds of numbers, and also there was not strong enough management to oversee the process.

Mr Howlin previously indicated that if 9,000 people leave, that would create the potential to hire up to 3,000 new recruits. Those people would be hired on much lower salaries than those involved in the early retirement process.