A married couple of secondary school teachers say they had no option but to move from Dublin to Cork due to the cost of housing in the capital.
There has been a teacher shortage in all of Ireland but Dublin schools have reportedly been hit the hardest. A survey published last week by the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland reveals teaching is no longer an attractive profession in this country. There is better remuneration in other careers and the housing crisis is causing teachers to emigrate.
The housing crisis was one of the deciding factors that caused secondary school teachers Jennifer and her husband Peter to leave Dublin. Jennifer, who is originally from Cork said: “What really brought it on was the pandemic…when the lockdown happened, we were visiting my family in Kinsale. Then we kind of got to see what life was like outside of Dublin and then we decided to move.
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“A huge factor of that was obviously the cost of buying a house. We're both teachers, so to be able to buy a house within the proximity to our school would've been hugely expensive.” At the time Jennifer and Peter left their schools in Dublin, there were “maybe two or three colleagues in the same school all left at the same time”.
The 33-year-old mum said: “All [left] for the same reasons. The pandemic probably accelerated plans but just the lifestyle of being outside Dublin is more attractive.” Things are cheaper outside of Dublin, not just houses and groceries but also petrol prices, Jennifer said, adding that while moving back to Cork was always in the cards, for many the cost of living was a huge factor.
Additionally, salaries are not lucrative enough for teachers, particularly those with contracts that are only 11 hours per week. Jennifer thinks it would help if Dublin schools adapted the London model of giving add-ons to teacher salaries depending on where in Dublin they taught. Jennifer said: “It's just hard for teachers, especially [for those] with the low contract hours.
“Sometimes in schools teachers can have an 11-hour contract [per week] and that's just not feasible to pay rent or to buy a house or to pay a mortgage. A teacher’s teaching contract is generally 22 [hours], so someone could end up with a contract for half that, or sometimes even worse – somebody could be on a six hour contract. And as you can imagine, in comparison, getting 25 per cent of a salary isn't sustainable to live in Dublin – or most places, to be perfectly honest.”
In order to survive, some teachers find other jobs or rely on subbing. “But it's not sustainable because it's not guaranteed. And then also they can't get a mortgage on that either – they can only get a mortgage on what they're contracted, so that makes it really difficult as well for teachers.”
Jennifer and her 30-year-old husband Peter managed to secure jobs in Cork at the same school. They are both maths teachers, a subject that’s in demand. “My husband's maths and physics, and I'm maths and Irish, so, [they are] three fairly in demand subjects. That kind of helped us as well.” They were fortunate enough to buy a house in Cork at the end of 2020 “before the housing crisis got so bad” even outside the capital. They are now the proud parents of a baby girl.
According to the ASTI survey, almost a fifth of schools were forced to remove a subject/subjects from the curriculum. Almost 9 in 10 schools have had situations where no substitute teachers were available to fill teacher absences due to sick leave and other short-term absences.
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