Teachers ‘absolutely hate’ so-called Croke Park hours, says Cork-based ASTI president

CORK-based former Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) president, Ann Piggott, has claimed that teachers “absolutely hate the Croke Park hours with a vengeance”.

Last week, teachers voted in favour of a motion calling for the abolition of the Croke Park hours. 

Under the Public Sector Agreement 2010-2014, also known as the Croke Park agreement, teachers are required to work an additional 33 hours per annum.

Ms Piggott’s branch of the ASTI, Cork South Paddy Mulcahy branch, was one of four branches to call for their abolition at the union’s annual congress this week, with a motion “that the ASTI campaign for the abolition of the Croke Park hours, without any financial penalty to teachers”.

All four motions relating to the Croke Park hours were passed by the congress, including one that called for the ASTI to work with other unions and one that called for “industrial action, up to and including strike action, if the unpaid 33 Croke Park hours are not terminated before the beginning of the 2025/26 school year”.

Addressing the delegates, Ms Piggott said: “Croke Park should be exclusively for entertainment, yet for teachers, the term Croke Park has become synonymous with extra hours, the misery of our lives in what we call ‘after-school detention for teachers’.”

Ms Piggott said that up to 10 hours can be used as discretionary, but they are subject to management approval.

The hours are often used for continuing professional development, she explained.

The Cork representative said that teachers can also give up days off “to clock up the curse of the Croke Park Hours”, adding, “if you have perhaps over 33 years’ service, you might be able to buy your way out, and have money deducted from your salary”.

Ms Piggott said there is a fear that they will become a permanent fixture.

“They were introduced as an emergency measure in 2010... 14 years later the hours are still here when other professions have successfully cast off their shackles, and my big fear is that somehow, some day, they will be finally and permanently added to our contracts in a pay agreement, and they will never go away.”

Cork English teacher Conor Murphy, a member of ASTI’s standing committee executive, told The Echo: “We obviously have to have some meetings, but the idea that you have to spend that amount of time to get things done is frankly insulting to teachers and their professionalism.”