Art teacher Martina McGill commutes more than an hour each way to her school on Arranmore island in Co Donegal by car, ferry and bus.
Her school, Gairmscoil Mhic Diarmada, teaches 75 students through both English and Irish. One-third of the students do not speak English or Irish as their first language.
McGill (36) lives in Glenties, a 40-minute drive from Burtonport, where she gets an often rocky 20-minute ferry to Arranmore, followed by a short bus trip to her school.
“By the time I get off the boat, depending on the waves and the weather, it would be well over an hour by the time I get to school. You could be running off the boat sometimes because the waves are crashing in – you make sure you’re wearing good, good shoes,” McGill says.
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Speaking at the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) conference in Co Kilkenny on Tuesday, McGill called for a reintroduction of the island allowance, worth €2,297, as well as the Teaching Through Irish allowance of €1,974 and the Gaeltacht allowance of €3,891.
These allowances are applicable only to teachers who entered the profession before 2011.
It means the teachers at Gairmscoil Mhic Diarmada who were made permanent before 2011 have access to these allowances, but “we don’t have that luxury”.
“The issue for us is that the island allowance doesn’t affect that many schools, and so it doesn’t cost the Government that much more money to accommodate those teachers. Everyone has travel costs, but we have an additional one,” McGill says.
Without any of these allowances, McGill struggles to make ends meet. Her take-home pay every month is just short of €3,500. She spends €440 on diesel, and €120 on the ferry. Food is €600 a month, and utilities and other bills come to about €800.
While she is currently living in family-owned accommodation, she is planning to take out a mortgage which she estimates would cost her €1,200 a month.
This would leave her with just over €300 a month for anything other than immediate bills.
“We are planning to build, but I don’t know when that can be, because it would mean living pay cheque to pay cheque. To be quite honest, I’m not far off that as it is. I’m fortunate [to be living in family accommodation] now, but in the next couple years I would be looking at paying back a mortgage, and it’ll be tight.”
Conall Ó Dufaigh is a second-level teacher at a Gaelscoil in north Wicklow who teaches English and history.
A delegate at the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) conference in Wexford, he says he receives about €3,000 into his pay packet in net terms each month. However, he says there are some months when it is a win if he does not have to dip into his savings to get by.
He is renting accommodation and paying just over €1,200 per month. He said this is considerably more than he was paying in a previous property.
He commutes to work but the travelling is not too bad, he said. He uses public transport.
But Ó Dufaigh said the rising cost of living is very noticeable.
“Currently I am finding the outgoings are eating heavier into my monthly earnings,” he said.
“As you can imagine, I’m trying to save money. And it always ends up being, kind of closing the gap at the end of the month. Can I reach that point where the next pay cheque comes in without having to dip into the savings?
“Because when you’re dipping into the savings, you’re seeing whatever you saved is not going up or stagnating, it’s going down. These times require us to be very kind of frugal and very on top of this sort of thing.”
He said he sees prices rising and that a lot of everyday goods are much more expensive than they used to be.
“A regular shop can easily cost a huge amount of money. I paid an electricity bill the other day and it was quite a lot. It was €400-€500. I don’t think I have ever paid that much in an energy bill.”
Ó Dufaigh said he would be supporting calls for improvements in pay for teachers at the ASTI conference this week.
“Over the last number of years we have had a couple of small pay rises although they amounted to half or less than half of the rate of inflation at that time.
“A pay rise that does not match inflation is a pay cut. That is the reality that teachers across the country are feeling. And beyond teachers, that is the reality, I think, most of us in the country are feeling day to day.”
