New teachers still owe State €1m

More than €1m overpaid to nearly 3,000 new teachers in the first half of 2011 has yet to be recovered by the Department of Education.

The Comptroller & Auditor General’s report said it should have applied the cuts to pay rates for new entrants to the public service to all teachers added to payroll from January last year. If that had happened, he said, anybody previously paid as a teacher would have been quick to make it known and could have had the incorrect deductions reinstated.

Instead, the department continued to pay all new teachers up to June of last year at the pre-2011 rate. It is only now starting to recoup the average €350 overpayments to an estimated 1,600 second-level and 1,400 primary teachers.