Teachers can keep payment on return to schools

By Niall Murray, Education Correspondent

Five teachers who had to return to their schools after long periods running education centres have been allowed to retain the associated allowances of up to €27,000 a year.

Some education centre directors were in the job for over a decade before the Department of Education directed a year ago that nobody can hold such posts for more than five years.

Their unions brought a claim when affected teachers were told they would not be able to keep an allowance they had been receiving for the work.

The case could not be resolved at the Teachers’ Conciliation Council, the industrial relations mechanism for teacher unions and the department. The decision last month followed a hearing under the conciliation and arbitration scheme for teachers.

The 21 full-time and nine part-time centres have their origins in the early 1970s, and are run by school teachers seconded to director roles. Their main function is to provide professional training for primary and second-level teachers on curriculum developments.

The dispute between the department and the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, and Teachers’ Union of Ireland centred on whether the allowance paid to directors was a principal’s allowance or an allowance benchmarked against that paid to school principals.

The department argued that it could no longer be paid as the associated duties were no longer being done by those returning to their school jobs.

The unions cited past correspondence from department officials linking the role directly to that of a principal, and rules that mean a principal’s allowance being paid for over five years is retained where the recipient is moved involuntarily.

The five claimants had served between nine and 12 years in the roles, and stood to lose between €18,600 and €27,200 a year, depending on any allowances they may have already been earning in previous teaching posts.

The department had argued that secondment of these teachers to education centres were temporary arrangements that were renewable annually rather than indefinite.

Adjudicator Daniel Murphy reported that the department told him an annual renewal was never refused.

It is impossible to believe that a process of annual renewal which has produced the same result in respect of every holder of a post of director for over 40 years has any real meaning,” he wrote.

The department was also unable to tell Mr Murphy why the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform insisted on a five-year term limit.

“In summary… people who had been appointed to positions which they had every reasonable expectation to be of indefinite duration were removed from them for a reason which is not known and at a cost to them running up to almost €30,000 per annum,” he said.

“This can only be described as an extraordinary injustice to the individuals involved,” states the adjudicator’s finding.

He says the relationship between the allowance paid to the directors and the principal’s allowance was so close that rules on retention of allowances should apply. Based on the five claimants’ combined maximum remaining teaching service of up to 50 years, the total long-term cost could be around €1.4m plus any associated education pension costs.