Rachel Shanahan has mastered the art of hopping out of bed just after 6am and getting on the road within 15 minutes.
“My clothes are laid out, my lunch is packed,” says the 28-year-old second-level teacher of French and Irish. “I’ll have showered the night before, my hair is done in a plait, so I’m ready to go.”
The rush is down to the fact Shanahan commutes from Mullingar, Co Westmeath, to Neilstown in west Dublin. The journey takes about one hour and 40 minutes on toll-free roads in morning traffic.
If she leaves it a few minutes longer, she risks being late for school, which opens at 8.20am.
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“Once I hit heavy traffic, I start worrying,” she says. “I’m looking at the time wondering, ‘Do I need to call the deputy to say I’ll be late?’ It’s like a sick feeling in my stomach. You don’t want to leave the students or the school down.”
Shanahan, who lives with her parents, is like many teachers who cannot afford to live in the Greater Dublin Area.
Teachers’ unions say soaring rents and huge deposits required for homes are pricing members out of the capital and surrounding areas.
Schools in the Dublin area and beyond, meanwhile, are finding it difficult to attract qualified teaching staff due to the lack affordable accommodation as well as commuting costs.
This, in turn, is forcing schools to hire unqualified staff to plug gaps in many cases or, in the case of second-level schools, drop subjects.
These are some of the issues set to dominate teachers’ annual Easter conferences, which get under way on Monday afternoon.
Among the motions set to be debated are calls for a shorter pay scale for teachers, restoration of academic allowances and more middle-management posts.
However, many agree that the housing crisis lies at the heart of some of the most urgent issues facing the education system.
Under the current public sector pay deal, a teacher’s starting salary on full-time hours starts at about €45,000, rising to a maximum of €85,000 per year over the course of a career.
John Boyle, Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) general secretary, says a primary teacher who has about 10 years of service – typically in their early to mid-30s – can expect to be on a salary of €61,000. Salaries for secondary schoolteachers are slightly higher.
Rules limiting first-time buyer mortgages to four times an applicant’s income mean young teachers can borrow just €245,000. But the average mortgage value of a first-time buyer nationally is €290,000, according to latest official data. For many teachers, the numbers just don’t add up.
Let’s be clear about this – it is students who lose out most as a result of the recruitment and retention crisis, with less access in many schools to the full breadth of subjects across the curriculum
— TUI president David Waters
“Four times the salary after 10 years’ service is not going to get you a house at the national average; it wouldn’t even get you half a house in Dublin,” says Boyle.
The effect on schools in the Greater Dublin Area is evident in classrooms.
At primary level, the INTO estimates that there are up to 3,000 long-term vacancies in primary schools; two-thirds of these are in Dublin alone, while a considerable number are in commuter belt counties such as Louth, Kildare, Wicklow and Meath.
At second level many schools are also struggling to fill teaching positions, with hundreds of vacant posts in subjects such as maths and Irish, according to an unpublished draft study by the Department of Education.
During the last academic year there were more than 400 unfilled teaching posts at second level and a further 800 occupied by teachers who were not qualified to teach the subject they were delivering.
The problems were most acute in the Greater Dublin Area, where there was an average of more than three vacant posts per school which could not be filled or were reliant on ‘out of field’ teachers to cover subjects they were not qualified in. This compares to less than one in the west of Ireland.
Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) president David Waters says recruitment and retention issues have not been treated in any way seriously by governments, who have been happy to “ride it out” until demographics change.
“Let’s be clear about this – it is students who lose out most as a result of the recruitment and retention crisis, with less access in many schools to the full breadth of subjects across the curriculum,” says Waters.
“Clearly, the impact of the accommodation emergency is exacerbating the problem, particularly in situations where teachers have contracts of less than full hours.”
Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) general secretary Kieran Christie says the Programme for Government fails to provide any real commitment to addressing the teacher shortage crisis.
“This is despite the fact that recruiting and retaining teachers is now the number one threat to our education system,” he says.
Unions want a range of measures such as ensuring new entrants to the profession must have a job of full hours, as well as restoring posts of responsibility to pre-cutback levels. They also want Irish teachers working in jurisdictions such as Australia and Dubai to be awarded full incremental credit for their service abroad if they choose to return home.
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There is little doubt that teacher shortages are being felt most acutely in the capital. Given the rapid pace of house price rises, and the gradual increases under the teacher salary scale, unions say many are moving to more affordable areas to live.
Shanahan, for example, had been living in Dublin close to her teaching job but found it impossible to pay rent and meet her loan repayments. She took out a €2,000 car loan on top of €16,000 she borrowed to fund her two-year professional master’s in education qualification.
While she is happy to be close to her family back home, the situation is not what she envisaged for herself when she left school a decade ago.
“It can feel quite isolating. You’re up early, you go to work, you’re home in the evening and then it’s time to go to bed. You’re not really living,” she says.
“It feels like you don’t have actual money for yourself ... Once you pay off the loans, the car service, the petrol, the insurance, there’s not much left. I’ve never had more than €2,000 in my bank account.”
Government sources, however, say there are a range of plans on the horizon.
Minister for Education Helen McEntee has pointed to a host of measures announced in recent years aimed at boosting teacher supply, such as bursaries and fee refund schemes for new teachers, upskilling programmes and an expansion in initial teacher education places.
There is also a provision in the Programme for Government to “earmark certain cost-rental units for key local workers” such as teachers. This, in theory, could allow young teachers – as well as gardaí and nurses – to be allocated cost-rental housing near their place of work.
A Department of Housing spokesman recently said the required legal and policy framework to provide for cost-rental accommodation for key workers was being worked on.
Many teachers are sceptical, however, about how long it will take for such a scheme and how many will be able to avail of it. Some are weighing up their options to see what they can do in the meantime and coming to terms with what is possible – and what is not.
“It’s hard to see a future, especially as a single person,” says Shanahan. “Many of my friends are also at home and putting off having families. Living at home in my mid-30s ... still living at home? It’s not how I pictured my life.”
