Darren O'Rourke: Time Is of the Essence on Pension Parity

I want to ask the Minister to provide an update on the ongoing negotiations with school caretakers and school secretaries. Thank you Deputy for your question. School secretaries and caretakers are at the heart of our schools in this country and they are the key interface as we all know between our students, parents, school leaders and other staff and without them, our schools, it would just be unsustainable, the value that they contribute, so supporting our school staff is an absolute priority. My department has been engaging with Forsa and the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service, Reform and Digitalisation over the past number of months under the auspices of the Workplace Relations Commission and the Labour Court in relation to a number of claims, including a claim for a comparable pension entitlement. The matter of comparable pension entitlement was referred to the Labour Court and the parties remain in process and my department remains committed to reaching a resolution on this very important matter. As with any industrial relation matters, for engagement is sensitive and it is complex, the matters under discussion are confidential until the process concludes, but I just want to reassure from my perspective and government's perspective, the value that we place in our school secretaries and caretakers and it's absolutely imperative that we get this matter resolved. The reason I raise this issue is because we're coming towards the end of the school year and this will be our last opportunity at priority questions before the school year ends. At the start of the school year, school secretaries and caretakers reluctantly were on strike outside schools and in pursuit of pension parity. We could all see, and I hope government could see it and surely knows it, the level of public support and particularly within school communities that there is for school secretaries and caretakers. Their claim is a just claim, it's for pension parity and the deep concern at this stage, Minister, and I take on board every word of your response, the concern is that time is moving on and that these individuals in some circumstances are making decisions about when will they retire, when will they be able to move on. Time is of the essence here, Minister. Thank you Deputy and I absolutely concur with everything you have said there. I met with the school secretaries and caretakers in my own constituency back at the time. I know many of them, they're very familiar to me, they don't take going out on protest lightly, they didn't want to be there, I absolutely heard that loud and clear and I recognise that a comparable pension entitlement and enhanced terms and conditions is understandably an important objective for our secretaries and caretakers. So that's why my department has been engaging with Forsa over the past number of months under the auspices, as I say, of the Workplace Relations Commission and the Labour Court with the support and the input of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. So parties remain in that process and my department remains committed to reaching a resolution on all these matters and again, as with any industrial relations process, I cannot comment on this. But by way of background, and you may be aware, an agreement was reached in 2022 that provided for the assimilation of school secretaries to a payroll administered by my department, which has provided significant benefits in terms of pay and access to leave. So we're committed to ensuring that grant-funded school caretakers will be afforded the opportunity to avail of a similar agreement that was offered to grant-funded school secretaries. Go raibh maith agat, Minister. In this, I want to just make the case that whatever helpful role you can have with the parties involved to try and move things on and bring things to a successful resolution. We are aware of some of the issues at stake here, access, for example, to a public service pension scheme versus auto-enrollment versus a third bespoke model. I would make the strong case, Minister, and I hope that you hear it and can pass it on to your ministerial colleagues. There is a real concern here that there won't be a recognition of years of dedicated contribution, that there will be a disadvantage, for example, for those people who have longer service, who have less years left on their contracts, who are closer to retirement in effect. I think it's really, really important that there is a recognition in any pension scheme of the years of dedicated service that people have. This can't be about a future scheme for people newly coming into the job, so to speak. Thank you. Just in relation to secretaries and caretakers, we've been given access to the single public pension scheme, service pension scheme, so engagement has been ongoing with the support of the state's industrial relation bodies, and as with all industrial relations processes where engagement is sensitive and complex, all those discussions remain confidential. My department welcomed the commencement of the auto-enrollment retirement savings scheme, which is administered by the National Automatic Enrollment Retirement Savings Authority, an ERSA, in January of this year, so responsibility for employer compliance with the scheme lies with NERSA. Revenue provides payroll data to NERSA, who use this to identify and enroll eligible employees. Employers were required to complete their profile on the MyFutureFund employer portal using their revenue online services credentials before January of this year to ensure that they're compliant with their obligations under the legislation. Employers are required to ensure that their payroll systems are capable of calculating and submitting contributions, and that employee contributions were matched in accordance with the scheme's requirements. It's important to note that all employers are required to comply with the legislation underpinning MyFutureFund, regardless of their status. Just to say that the department has enrolled approximately 2,000 eligible secretaries from the 1st of January of this year. For more information, visit nyseagrant.org.