Workload, recruitment and retention, pay, AI and Senior Cycle among key issues in General Secretary’s address to Annual Congress 2026
TUI General Secretary Michael Gillespie addressed over 500 delegates and guests at TUI’s Annual Congress in Kilkenny this afternoon. Some extracts from his wide-ranging speech are set out below.
Introduction
A properly functioning public education system cannot run on goodwill. Goodwill is not a budget line, and it is not a workforce plan. Goodwill does not fill vacancies or reduce class size. Goodwill does not create full hours, secure contracts, proper supports, or safe workloads. A world class education system requires world class investment. Ministers must ditch the plámás of praising excellence in public while quietly budgeting for decline in private which does not fool us. In raw terms, the proportion of GDP invested in education must rise from the current abysmal level to the EU average, at least.
Recruitment and Retention
In 2025, the pressure on our schools and those who teach and learn in them intensified.
Teacher supply remains one of the most urgent issues before us and over the past twelve months the recruitment and retention crisis tightened its grip. A system that cannot recruit and retain enough teachers is a system in decline.
Too many younger teachers still subsist on fragmented hours, scraps of jobs. They face long waits for permanency, housing costs they cannot meet, and a profession that too often asks for endless sacrifice before offering security. Critical, time-sensitive, life-choices have to be delayed, sometimes abandoned.
Meanwhile, schools struggle to fill vacancies. Subject choice narrows. Students lose out.
Workload
Excessive workload overload became even more severe over the past year. Burnout and stress are not side issues. They are central, health and safety issues. They are union issues, delegates, issues on which we must and will act. And let’s be clear; exhaustion is not a sign of professionalism. Burnout is not a companion to commitment. Overload is not a badge of honour.
Much of the excessive workload is bureaucratic, most of it adding nothing of use to the educational experience of students, all of it deflecting teachers from their core mission. Our members are being swamped by bureaucracy. We need to really start saying NO to this nonsense.
Extra work outside normal hours is not normal, or beneficial. It is unpaid labour. It fuels work intensification. It damages health. And when younger workers see a profession defined by exhaustion, inflexibility, and constant overreach, they will use their transferable skills elsewhere.
That is why our message to members must stay simple and firm. Say no to unnecessary extra work. Say no early. Say no collectively. Because what one teacher feels pressured to accept today quickly becomes what every teacher is expected to do tomorrow. Every new priority initiative that enters a workplace without time, support, or clarity adds to the burden. We do ourselves no favours by pretending otherwise.
If we are serious about reducing workload, then we must use the demographic opportunity in the years ahead to secure what we have consistently demanded, the 20/20 vision for post primary education, no more than 20 students in a class and no more than 20 contact hours in a week. That is not a slogan. It is a necessary condition for a sustainable profession; necessary too for quality and inclusive teaching.
Artificial Intelligence
We are now being told that AI will ease our burden. We have heard this before. Computers, digitalisation, smartphones, video recorders would decrease our workload. It didn’t. The administrative burden would be removed. It wasn’t. We would have more time to refine our professional skills. We haven’t. The use in education settings of artificial intelligence may bring potential benefits – the jury is out in that regard.
What we do know is that any such benefit will accrue only if, where and when AI enabled technologies are deployed prudently and safely, based on the professional judgement of teachers, not the convenience of administrators or the voracious appetite of big tech for big profit and market dominance. The risks associated with AI in education are huge de-professionalisation of teaching, dehumanisation of learning, loss of curricular sovereignty, amplification of racial, gender, cultural biases, system dependency, marketisation and privatisation of a core public good, the undermining of democratic governance.
Replacement of the real and human interaction by machined pretence. The tech oligarchs do not share or support our educational values. They openly and expensively oppose them. They want our children in their unregulated marketplace. We cannot allow this in our public education system.
Senior Cycle
Alongside all of this, schools and centres also faced major pressure through Senior Cycle redevelopment. To succeed, reform must be properly resourced, realistically phased, and built on fairness. That was our steadfast position in 2025, and it remains our position now. Reform without resources is not reform at all. It is simply cost-cutting with a glossy brochure.
All of this unfolded at a time when the world has become more unstable, more unequal, and more dangerous.
Pay
As to the next public service pay deal I wish to make it clear to all concerned, that no new pay deal is possible unless the local bargaining element of the current one is concluded. Let nobody misunderstand us: unfinished business cannot become the starting point for a new agreement.
In 2025, TUI members delivered results because we remained organised, disciplined, and focused on achievable and enforceable outcomes. We did not chase shadows or mouth meaningless slogans.
We secured protections. We forced corrections. We put time, pay, staffing, standards and collective bargaining at the centre of reform.
That is important, because in this union we do not measure success by headlines captured. For the TUI, success is not spin, it is making life better for TUI members.
Pay and bargaining were a central part of that work since last year’s Congress.
Under the current Public Service pay agreement, local bargaining was never optional. It is a core part of the agreement and worth up to 3% of basic pay costs. In post primary, we linked local bargaining directly to co-operation with Senior Cycle Redevelopment. The first instalment of 1% due from 1 September 2025, we demanded as a general increase, with backdating.
Let me say this clearly, TUI will not allow productivity to become a code word for more work, more intensity, and more pressure. TUI will not allow local bargaining to become a Trojan horse for workload expansion, doing more for the same pay in less time.
Adult Educators/Tutors
Of course, the first duty of a union is to protect the employment of its members.
That is why what happened in GRETB is of grave concern. In that ETB, the work did not disappear, and the need did not disappear. The learners did not disappear. What disappeared was the funding. You cannot claim to value adult education while cutting the educators, shrinking the provision, and abandoning the learners. ESOL and adult literacy provision were cut back, and dedicated educators serving some of the most vulnerable people in our society were left facing the loss of their jobs. That is not reform. That is failure, and betrayal. SOLAS and the Department must fund this sector properly. Where there is work, there must be jobs. Where there is need, there must be provision. And where cuts threaten our members in Galway or in any other ETB, we must and will stand up, speak out, and prevail.
Technological Universities
In the Technological University and Institute of Technology sector, the work to ensure a unified sector with parity in pay, conditions, and esteem continues. We reject regional pay variation, fragmented structures, any model that weakens national standards or treats terms and conditions as negotiable extras.
The lack of circulars and clear information from the Department of Further and Higher Education is unacceptable. It creates confusion, encourages solo runs by management, and opens the door to deregulation by drift. If that continues, the sector will be weakened, not strengthened. That is a challenge we will confront in the years ahead.
On apprenticeships, our position remains consistent. Apprenticeships must be high quality, properly funded, respected, and regulated. We will continue to oppose any approach that undermines quality or devalues the role of educators and trainers. We also say clearly that sub minimum wage approaches have no place in a modern apprenticeship system. They undermine recruitment, dignity, and the long-term credibility of the sector and parity of esteem.
Conclusion
Our union is strong. Our case is strong. Our members deserve better than a system held together by overwork and goodwill. And our students deserve better than a State that talks about ambition while starving education of the investment it needs.