A call for the restoration of the no-fault eviction ban, which ended at the start of this month, has been backed by delegates at the Teachers’ Union of Ireland conference in Cork.
The union’s leadership has also been instructed to reject any new public pay deal that fails to provide a raise above the rate of inflation.
A debate on an emergency housing motion included a contribution from Aoife Ní Chéileachair, an Irish language science teacher who is facing eviction from her home in Arklow, Co Wicklow, after being told the landlord wants to move into the house.
She said she may end up leaving teaching, despite her skills being in high demand, because she cannot find an alternative to paying rent at a level that effectively ends her hopes of saving to eventually buy a home.
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“At this point in time,” she said, “I’ve told my principal that I may be unable to take my post back in September if I cannot find anywhere to live. I am a very specialised teacher. I am right now doing an extra masters with UL and MIC [Mary Immaculate College] in bilingual education. The irony is I may not be able to use that masters.
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“If the Government is actually serious about not only teacher recruitment, but teacher retention, then we have to put a lot of pressure on them to make sure people in circumstances like mine can actually house ourselves. Right now, I can’t house myself and I will be unable to continue in this profession.”
Meanwhile, one of the conference’s more lively debates ended with a defeat for the leadership, which had sought to have an emergency motion on pay backed by 26 branches referred back to the executive for further consideration.
TUI president Liz Farrell argued the motion, which instructed the leadership to call for the rejection by members of any new public sector pay deal that did not specifically provide an above the rate of inflation rise, did not allow for other factors in any negotiation with Government such as the provision of budgetary supports for workers to be taken into account.
In response, Dublin delegate Eddie Conlon said it was “quite bizarre that at a trade union meeting someone would say the aspiration to protect wages from inflation is flawed”. He said passing the motion would send a message that the “narrative has changed”, adding that “the Government has put €6 billion in rainy day fund [but] Jesus, it’s lashing rain out there”.
The motion was comfortably carried.
TUI general secretary Michael Gillespie said the union remains opposed to the establishment of any Dublin pay weighting as it believes the measure would not work. He said a wider range of measures, including increased pay, is needed to help teachers struggling to afford accommodation wherever they live.
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“The first thing we know is that the London allowance hasn’t worked,” said Mr Gillespie, who was addressing the issue after the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation adopted policy in favour of the idea earlier this week.
“We have people commuting to schools in Dublin from Mullingar, from Athlone and they paid a lot of money for their houses,” he said. “We also have people who bought houses in Dublin in 2013 which may have been cheaper than what people are paying for their houses in Mullingar now. So what do you do? Do you pay everybody starting off in Dublin an allowance? Or do you pay existing people an allowance?”
He added that “it’s playing one group off against another. Some will end up lucky, some unlucky”.
Giving young teachers permanent jobs when they start in teaching, filling the many vacant senior posts and increasing pay more generally would, he argued, all be better ways of addressing the issue generally.
