Irish schools are under strain as hundreds of teaching posts remain vacant ahead of the new school term, teachers have warned.
The Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) points to 322 post-primary teaching vacancies advertised at present on the recruitment website educationposts.ie.
Speaking with RTÉ's This Week, Liam Walsh, principal of Coláiste Pobail Setanta college in Clonee, Co Dublin, said that his school is among those struggling to recruit staff - and has been doing so for years.
"Whether it is down to our location in Dublin - because the price of accommodation trying to attract teachers into Dublin for that - or whether it is that a lot of the jobs I’m advertising, actually nearly every job I’m advertising, you can’t advertise it as a permanent job," Mr Walsh said.
He added that it is difficult for teachers coming up from Co Cork and Co Mayo to take a chance on a job that might not be there in a year, as they are fixed-term contracts.
'A seller's market'
In some subjects Mr Walsh revealed that he had received only one application and that he was "lucky to get them" - if the teacher accepted the school's offer.
"It is a seller's market. You are left without choice then as the principal of a school and you want choice because you want to be able to choose the best candidate and best teacher for your students," he said.
He added the school has been recruiting full-time since the start of June. Of the ten open positions, he has just two left to fill.
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The school still needs a Spanish teacher and an English as an additional language teacher ahead of the new school year which is set to begin this week.
The CAO has some welcome news, however. The number of students opting for post-primary teaching as their first preference has increased this year by 11%.
'Better pay - better pension'
When Sarah Dowd qualified as a physics teacher, there were no job opportunities.
"All I could see was maternity cover or six hours a week sickness cover and things like that", she said, and so, in 2013, left Ireland for London where she taught for six years.
It was a great start to her career as she was working with designated full-time experienced teachers. Now Sarah Dowd is teaching in New York.
"We operate under a collective bargaining agreement and contract that gets renegotiated every three years," she told RTÉ's This Week.
"The pay is much better than Ireland, the pension is much better than Ireland. I teach less hours and I have more time for planning, and I have more time for professional development than if I was in Ireland."
While she considered moving home during the Covid-19 pandemic, Ms Dowd looked at international schools outside of Dublin, rather than public institutions.
'Lack of long-term planning'
The Department of Education has said it has increased the number of teachers over the last ten years by over 17,000.
ASTI General Secretary, Kieran Christie, insists that the current crisis is the result of a lack of long-term planning over the past decade, and the increase in the number of teachers is the result of demographics.
While teachers are coming out of retirement to help plug gaps, this is no long-term solution, he said, but an indication of a broken system.
He added that if you go to the Teaching Council website there are 120,000 teachers registered but the public system requires only about 70,000 people.
"So there are 50,000 people who are qualified, and they're not all in Dubai, they're not all in Canada. Many of them are still in this country but are opting to take on another career," he said.
"Teaching as a career needs to be looked at and rebuilt and rebalanced. And I'm talking there about things like rebuilding of the promotional opportunity within teaching, and the length of the pay scale needs to be addressed."
