Third Level Staff
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-14
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Sinéad Gibney (SD), Dublin Rathdown

I finished my last contribution by pointing out that there should not be any hierarchy within our educational offerings in this country. I appreciate that it is not State funded, but that does not make it any less of an experience for those students who are studying there and for those teachers who, as I said multiple times, have offered decades of service to teaching in their region and community. I would have thought it all the more reason in this instance, when it is a private college where the staff do not necessarily have the same level of workers' protections as they might enjoy in the public sector, for the Department to step in. What we are looking for once again is security for staff. The staff are asking the Government to guarantee enhanced redundancy protections through the ring-fencing of five weeks redundancy arrangements for affected employees.
The Department should lead immediately to establish and oversee a formal working group involving SETU, Carlow College, staff representatives and SIPTU to examine opportunities for redeployment and integration into SETU and other alternatives that minimise compulsory redundancies. If Ministers genuinely believe in stakeholder engagement, now is the time to demonstrate it. The Minister of State mentioned multiple times that the students and staff of Carlow College have been at the forefront of her thinking and that of the Minister's, Deputy Lawless. Unfortunately, that is not the message we are getting. What we are hearing is that they were not informed until late in the process that this was not a merger but in fact a selling off of assets. They were led to believe that transfer of employment would be available to them, and that there would be pathways by which they would be able to access new teaching roles in SETU after the merger. Instead, they have been faced with a very different reality in the last number of weeks. That is what we are asking for - that the Minister will engage and step in, regardless of the college's private status.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-14