Adult Education Tutors and their supporters have held a protest outside the Dáil calling for better employment conditions.
The tutors say they are paid hourly, forced to claim social welfare during school holidays, and have received no pay rise despite years of service.
They say that they are public servants, paid from the public purse but without public service contracts.
Lorcan McNamee who works for the Sligo Mayo Education and Training Board said the group wanted better pay and conditions.
"We're here to protest for a national contract and decent pension provisions, incremental salary scale, which is what every other teacher has in the country. We are committed professional people and we are permanent part-time. We are laid off five times a year. We're laid off at the moment. We're not on midterm break with like other teachers. We are laid off we are on the dole. And it six more weeks, we'd be laid off for two weeks for Easter. And 10 weeks after that we'd be laid off in the summer."
Egidija Vaitkiene who works at Cavan Monaghan Education and Training Board spoke of her humiliation when she has to sign on: "We have to go and sign and explain ourselves. And it takes a long time. And you feel stupid because social workers ask you why you're not looking for a proper job. But this is a proper job I'm teaching others like Ukrainian students the English language for 15 years."
Sheena Groome, Kildare Wicklow Education and Training Board said the process was soul destroying: "Some of us have studied for six years or more than university. Many of us have worked in the education sector for 20 years plus, it's soul destroying."
Peter Dunican who has taught Horticulture at Cork ETB for the past 12 years is concerned about the implications for his pension: "I will have to rely on the state pension alone as there is no tutor employee pension scheme. That means tutors will not receive a lump sum either. Tutors are retiring into poverty after a lifetime of service. Compared to second level teachers, Tutors are second class employees. We are all qualified to teach yet we are treated very differently."
Those who benefit from the tutors services , also turned up at today's demonstration to show support.
Bertha O'Brien, a student at Crumlin College said she wanted to see her tutors have secure employment: "I'm here to support in the tutors in college because they don't have a contract for the work that they're doing. I do a computer course and it means a lot to me because I'm just trying to catch up, like my age group, we're trying to catch up with the basic computer skills that a lot of people take for granted."
Roisin Ryder from the F2 Centre in Rialto in Dublin said their work enhances local communities: "I think they ETB tutors and the work that they do means that there is a breadth of knowledge that's shared with with older people. All the tutors are of such high quality so it could be anything from Community Development to Drama to making films to literacy support, creative writing, dance, a whole range of stuff that local people need."
In a statement, the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science say a number of government Departments have been engaging on the issue.
It said while agreement was reached on some issues, the claim to align tutors to a pay scale of an existing grade in ETBs remains unresolved.
It said broad details of a proposal in response to a Labour Court recommendation was shared with unions last year and is currently under discussion between the Departments with a view to finalising the offer to the unions as the earliest opportunity.
