50 signatures reached
To: The Department of Education
Paperless Payslips for the Public Service
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Recent figures show that the Department of Education spent €1,798,510.26 posting paper payslips to teachers, retired teachers and non-teaching staff in 2017 (source: Irish Times)
During the year, more than a million payslips were generated for primary school teachers and about half that number for post-primary teachers costing €683,177 and €356,62 respectively.
Posting 768,504 payslips to retired teachers was expected to cost €494,377 last year. For non-teaching staff, the expected cost was €264,584.57 for 411,191 payslips.
A spokesman for the department told The Irish Times that the provision of a “self-service” payslip facility is part of a payroll modernisation project currently being undertaken but as the Oireachtas debate question (https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/question/2018-09-18/section/208/#pq-answers-244) states, this is only for the relatively small proportion of the approximately 120,000 staff that are employed under the ETBI.
I am calling on the Department of Education to take a stand immediately and offer the self-service payslip facility that is already in widespread operation among several other departments (https://pssc.gov.ie/online-employee-payslips/) to all teaching staff and not simply ETB schools.
Why is this important?
Many schools, especially in the voluntary sector are underfunded and rely heavily on fund raising and voluntary contributions.
Millions are being spent every year on sending pointless postage to teachers who either file the payslips away and never look at again or simply throw straight in the bin.
This wastage needs to stop!