BLOCKED TOILETS and growing levels of rubbish will be among the consequences of school caretakers remaining on a strike.
Tim Daly is the caretaker at the Holy Family National School and has been in the role for the past eight years. Since Thursday, he has been on strike with secretaries in the county as they seek access to the Single Public Service Pension Scheme which teachers and SNAs receive.
He joined with colleagues on the picket line outside the constituency office of Clare TD, Timmy Dooley (FF) on Tuesday morning with other pickets mounted outside the offices of Cathal Crowe TD (FF) and Joe Cooney TD (FG). Deputy Cooney took the approach of picking those who visited his office for coffee in Oly’s Bakery on Parnell Street.
Explaining why he has gone on strike, Tim stated, “It is just to get parity with my work colleagues, they all get paid by the Department of Education, they all have their pension rights and gratuity rights, we have nothing, we get paid by the Board of Management even though the secretaries get paid by the Department of Education but they still have no gratuities or pensions, we’re looking for parity for caretakers and secretaries all over Ireland”.
He continued, “The pay for the secretary changed in 2022 when they were taken under the umbrella of the Department of Education, all they got was the pay, they didn’t get the gratuity or the pension with it, they never brought the caretakers in under that umbrella, now we’re all together in the one fight”.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, the Ennis man who is a native of Co Cork detailed the impact to a school in the absence of a caretaker. “There’s a lot of stuff going wrong, there’s toilets being blocked, water being spilled, no toilet paper or hand towels, no bins going out so the rubbish is building up, anything that goes wrong they can’t ring, there’s always stuff that can go wrong in a school which is over sixty years old but at the moment nothing can be done to fix it”.
Work is where he would much prefer to be, “I’d rather be at work which is way nicer than standing here on the street looking for people to beep their horns. I’d hope that this week surely be to God there will be some sort of a resolution, we’ve targeted all of the TDs on Tuesday so hopefully they can get onto the Ministers and put on the pressure to see can something come out of this before the end of the week”.
“Since Monday we’ve got great support, in the school where I work a lot of the teachers, the principal and vice principal have all been out backing me the whole time, there’s no scarcity of support, everyone passing us is beeping and supporting us,” he added.
