Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 16 December 2025
513. Deputy Seán Ó Fearghaíl asked the Minister for Education and Youth the key measures taken to improve employment conditions for teachers during 2025; her priorities for same in 2026; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [72471/25]
View answerThere are more qualified teachers than ever working in our education system with the most recent data showing over 79,000 qualified teachers are employed in the State.?
The teaching profession is highly attractive, with strong demand for teacher education programmes with over 3,600 newly qualified teachers registered with the Teaching Council in 2025 with over 127,000 on the register. Salaries are competitive, starting at €44,879 (primary) and €46,448 (post-primary) and rising to €85,000 under the current pay deal.????? Few teachers resign: less than 3% of the teaching workforce resign or retire annually from contracted teaching posts.
Around 6% of first-choice CAO applications from 2017–2024 were for teaching, showing steady demand. In 2025, first preferences rose by 9% for primary teaching and 5% for post-primary. 85% of newly appointed primary teachers in 2024/25 are on full-time, mostly fixed-term contracts, 75% of new post-primary teachers are full-time and 93% of teachers with 5+ years’ experience hold permanent full-time or pro-rata contracts.
In April 2025, Minister McEntee announced a reduction in the period of time for a teacher to become eligible for the award of a CID. The reduction, from a period of continuous employment of two years to a period of continuous employment of one year, is a significant improvement to the employment conditions of teachers.
The public service agreements have allowed a programme of pay restoration for public servants and new entrant pay has been gradually restored over the years.
The Public Service Pay Agreement 2024-2026 (PSA) builds on improvements to pay for teachers that were made in previous pay agreements. It provides for further baseline increases of 9.25% for over 100,000 staff in the school sector with lower paid workers receiving higher percentage increases.
By the end of this agreement, these increases would increase the pay of a teacher on the top point of the teacher pay scale to around €85,000 per annum. The starting pay for a teacher will be around €46,000 per annum, which is almost €20,000 higher than the 2011 rates. Two increases to pay were made to teachers this year as follows:
• A general round increase in annualised basic salary for all public servants of 2% or €1,000, whichever is greater, on 1 March 2025.
• A general round increase in annualised basic salary for all public servants of 1% on 1 August 2025
The Government is committed to the delivery of quality public services and will continue to approach public service pay in a balanced way that is reasonable and fair to both public servants and to the taxpayer. Any further amendments to Teacher Terms and Conditions, including pay and allowances, can only be achieved through engagement and collective bargaining agreements between the Government and the public service unions or through the Teachers Conciliation Council (TCC) forum.
In addition, to assist teacher supply, recently regulations were approved to allow teachers who qualified overseas to undertake their induction in the State.
My Department will continue to engage with the Education Partners to ensure that teaching remains a highly attractive profession with high levels of newly qualified teachers entering the provision and low levels of resignation from the workforce.
