Letters to the Editor: School secretaries and caretakers must be treated fairly
Students of Cork Educate Together Secondary School rallied in support of school secretaries Joanne Yelverton and Elaine Barrow and caretaker Andrew (Ash) McKrae earlier this week. Picture: Chani Anderson
The strike by school secretaries and caretakers has shone a harsh light on a shameful injustice in our education system. These staff, who are absolutely essential to the daily running of our schools, are denied even the most basic entitlements: They have no pension provision, and are refused fair sick leave and bereavement leave. To treat dedicated workers in this way is nothing short of disgraceful.
Let us be clear: Schools cannot function safely without them. Secretaries ensure accurate record-keeping, manage emergency contact with parents, and administer medication to children who need it. Caretakers keep buildings safe, carry out essential fire and security checks, and maintain hygiene standards.
Their absence leaves rubbish piling up, toilets uncleaned, and hazardous spillages unattended. Fire safety checks are left undone, playground equipment goes unmonitored, and vital record-keeping — including medical needs and parent contact information — falls by the wayside.
Without secretaries and caretakers, safeguarding is weakened and children’s safety is put at real risk. These are not optional roles. Without them, schools face potential closure.
It is intolerable that the very people who protect our children’s health, safety, and dignity at school are themselves denied dignity in their working conditions. This is not only unfair — it is dangerous.
It is time to recognise that these workers are not “support staff” in the background but essential professionals who protect the wellbeing of our children every day. To continue denying them fair pensions, sick leave, and bereavement leave is to not only devalue their contribution, but also to jeopardise the safe operation of our schools.
For that reason, I extend an open invitation to any like-minded retired teachers, both primary and secondary, to join me in supporting picket lines and offering words of encouragement. These workers deserve not only our solidarity, but our voices raised loudly on their behalf.
The Government and education authorities must end this injustice. Until then, we must stand shoulder to shoulder with those who make our schools safe, clean, and welcoming places for our children.
I urge the Government and education authorities to act swiftly to resolve this dispute with justice, fairness, and respect.
Our children’s safety, and our schools’ future, depend on it.
If it is equitable, and surely it is, that school secretaries and caretakers should enjoy pensions comparable to their school colleagues, then an obvious question arises. Why should the vast majority of private sector workers pay far, far more to get far, far less than their peers enjoying public sector pensions?
Our divisive, two-tier pension system is an ongoing affront to the ideas of equity and social solidarity, but the possibility of reform working towards fairness is, at best, extremely remote. That reality is another failing undermining the credibility of our political system. Sadly, the proposed mandatory enrolment pension schemes seem likely to exacerbate rather than ease those disparities.
We have seen over the last 35 years the power and influence that the President of Ireland can wield when they speak on the social and political issues of the time.
It is generally accepted that Mary Robinson redefined the role, and that Mary McAleese and Michael D Higgins have carried on in a similar vein. Indeed, Mr Higgins has often found himself to be the target of sniping from members of Government parties when he has had the temerity to speak to issues which face the people of Ireland, as those words may reflect a failure of the government of the time.
With that in mind, Heather Humphreys has been in government since 2014. In that time, many of the societal problems that we currently face have become significantly worse.
Homelessness figures — including the number of homeless children — have exploded. Hospital waiting times have increased. We are now closer than ever to abandoning our neutrality and spending billions on weapons each year, and sexual assault crimes are on the increase.
How then, could we expect Humphreys — were she to win the election — to use the voice the presidency would afford to speak to those issues, when she has been part of the government for the past 11 years that has led to the society that we have today?
Mary Lou McDonald correctly stated that the person in the street isn’t overly exercised by the presidential election. She pointed out that huge increases in the weekly grocery bill, concern about paying the utility bills, the cost of childcare, and the long wait for urgent surgery, etc, are far more pressing issues for the general public.
The disinterested public is being subjected to an undignified display of misinformation by declared and “considering” candidates who are either uninformed about or are misrepresenting the limitations of the office. The huffing and puffing is best expressed in a modified chorus of Lanigan’s Ball:
Seven long years I’ll spend in Dublin, seven long years doing nothing at all; Seven long years, I’ll spend in Dublin, learning to dance and having a ball; She stepped out, I stepped in again, I stepped out and she stepped in again; She stepped out, I stepped in again, learning to waffle in an effort to win.
The political parties find the election for a redundant office nothing more than an unwelcome distraction. None wants to waste time and resources on a campaign they’d rather not step into, but can’t risk stepping out of. They are annoyed by the so-called celebrities who are testing the waters with populist missives that the president is some kind of super-duper-taoiseach with unlimited executive powers.
The presidential role is no more than a ceremonial role which is pompous, irrelevant, and unaffordable in a modern democratic republic. Micheál Martin would do well to call an immediate referendum to abolish this historic residue of subservience to the British monarchy.
While I do not underestimate the serious threat to our biodiversity from the Asian hornet, there have been some Father Ted moments from minister Christopher O’Sullivan. In language straight from MI5, he stated he was unable to “give away the exact location [of the nest] for obvious reasons”. Perhaps fear of a getaway? Hiding the contraband?
Next line delivered without a hint of irony: “No queens have been seen in the vicinity.” At this point I was expecting him to call the whole affair ‘Operation Sting’.
As the minister is focused on biodiversity at the moment, perhaps he could comment on the dwindling population of our native Irish hare and explain why licences have been given to the 89 coursing clubs again. How is the hare ‘protected’ under Irish law if hunters can capture them in their thousands and set dogs on them?
Double standards and double entendres abound.
This past week we have learned that Greyhound Racing Ireland is to take over the operation of Lifford Greyhound Stadium from the private consortium that owns it. Lifford was one of four stadia singled out for closure due to its economic unviability in the 2019 Indecon report on the viability of greyhound racing stadia in the Republic of Ireland, and in fact, the stadium had closed down even before that report was published.
A private consortium called Canaradzo Ltd, headed up by the British professional gambler Harry Findlay, subsequently bought the stadium and reopened it in March 2019 amid much fanfare. At the time, the new owners claimed they would be in a position to operate the stadium without a reliance on government funding.
Their inability to live up to this promise was becoming clear as far back as last November when Sports Information Service, the British company which provides retail and online betting products internationally, was brought into Lifford to stream Sunday night racing.
The news that Greyhound Racing Ireland is now stepping in to run Lifford is a clear indication that the stadium is as economically unviable in 2025 as it was in 2019. It is a patent attempt to save face on the part of the greyhound board. In the wake of the recent bans on greyhound racing in New Zealand, Wales, and Tasmania, they simply cannot afford, from a PR perspective, to have Lifford stadium close down for a second time in six years. Instead, the Irish taxpayer will foot the bill to spare their blushes.
The three other greyhound stadia identified as economically unviable in the Indecon report were Enniscorthy, Youghal, and Longford. Longford closed in 2020. Youghal has received €763,000 from Greyhound Racing Ireland since 2020 to keep it afloat. In 2024, the sum total of two paying customers attended races at Youghal Greyhound Track.
Greyhound Action Ireland is now calling on the agriculture minister Martin Heydon to inform the Irish taxpayer how much the bailout of Lifford stadium is likely to cost them.
