Madeleine Ní Ghallchobhair

“My pre-2011 colleagues earn about €8,000 more than me. I’m on an inferior pay scale. It means that in my last four years I have been underpaid by €32,000. That is my yearly wage, so I’ve worked one of those four years for free. I don’t think it would happen anywhere other than in female-dominated professions like teaching or nursing. It’s a disgraceful form of discrimination.”

Fiona Smyth

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“I’ve been teaching for 30 years and I know what it’s like starting off. In this day and age, it’s just not right. We should have equal pay for equal work. Teachers are living in Dublin where rents are high, mortgages are high. People always assume that teachers have permanent, pensionable jobs. But many young teachers are working for years without full hours. People forget about that. It’s not necessarily the secure job that people used to think it was.”

Robbie O’Flynn

“Four of my colleagues at school started after I did and are not getting equal pay. It’s not fair. They are doing the same job. We’ve come through the hard times. The bankers are back and everyone else is back. We feel it’s fair that our education standards are kept up, because teachers will leave and the profession will lose out. Multinationals won’t come here if our education system is poorer. We don’t want to be on strike, but we feel we’re doing what’s right.”

Noelle Murray

“I qualified after 2011, so unfortunately I’m on a lower starting pay scale. As a result, I earn up to €8,000 less a year. At the end of the day, I’m going in doing the same work as my colleagues, I put in the same amount of effort, I correct copies and do extra-curricular activities. I should be paid the starting salary that my colleagues had when they started. Minister Bruton has not committed to pay equality. How much longer will it take? Why aren’t new TDs and Ministers on a different pay scale as well?”

Interviews took place at the Dominican College on Griffith Avenue and St Michael’s College in Dublin 4