Parliamentary teachers give others a break
They clearly do not understand the details or context of the scheme.
Its purpose is precisely to prevent double-jobbing. When a sub goes in, there are two individual full-time jobholders, two jobs, two salaries.
In most cases a teacher down the line who does not have a job or only a temporary, part-time job gets a full job with entitlements. In a large to medium school, the sub eventually moves on to his or her 'own' post.
The difference which is causing such excitement arises from the fact that teachers within the rigid quota for the school are on an incremental scale based on individual service and qualifications.
Leave aside the grotesque injustice being hurled at conscientious public representatives who are operating an open, legal, official, PAYE-compliant scheme accountable down to the last cent.
Who do we want to represent us? Plush part-time hobbyists? Plutocratic fat cats whose natural habitat is the golden circle?
Do we want perpetually skint beggars on horseback who are constantly vulnerable to the flutter of brown paper envelopes?
Or do we want as public representatives ordinary people who live in the ordinary world facing the same ordinary struggle to live which we all face and who have ordinary minimal financial resources.
The underlying assumption behind the lumping together of all public representatives in a moral cesspit is that anybody who even thinks of representing their community must be a bad person and should be punished and hindered by all means possible.
Do we really want to tell our young people: "Do not even think of serving your community in any full-time capacity because you will automatically be labelled as a huckster?"
Might I suggest, very gently, that those who are so anxious to throw stones should instead throw in a nomination paper for themselves at next June's local and European elections?
Maurice O'Connell,
19, Forge Park,
Oakpark,
Tralee,
Co Kerry.
