John Dolan: Should a Cork city teacher be paid more than a county one?

Sure, there are wars taking place, and there is much talk about tariffs, there’s global instability, and of course climate change.

But few topics will get people as hot under the collar as their pay packet.

How much do I earn? How much do he and she earn? What should we be earning? What’s the industry average? Shouldn’t I be earning more (it’s never less!)?

But for all of that, we jealously guard our salary like it’s the fourth Secret of Fatima. Which only adds an extra sheen of tension to the subject.

I mean, be honest, given the choice between nude pics of yourself being put up online, and your salary, I bet it’s a close call? (In my case, prompting the possible response: “There you go, I always knew that Dolan guy had an over-inflated opinion of himself...”)

Well, this secrecy is certainly true for private sector workers, anyway. I often feel sympathy for the teachers, nurses, and gardaí in the public sector, when their family, next door neighbours, and friends all know to the nearest cent what they earn each year.

Yes, yes, it’s important that we have transparency, and that we can hold the government and its employees to account, but still, it must be awkward when your pal tells you to get the next round in because you are earning the average teacher salary of €36,075, which is €3,006 a month, or €18.50 an hour.

On the plus side, public sector workers do tend to earn decent wages compared to the private sector and to their equivalent workers in other countries, even if their unions would never admit that - and their pensions are me daza too!

All of which brings me to an interesting debate that is playing out in certain circles at present.

Should public sector workers who live and work in large cities be paid more than people in the same jobs who work in rural areas, given the outrageous cost of day-to-day life in places like Dublin and Cork?

It’s a system that in the UK is called London Weighting - where the salaries of some civil servants and public sector workers such as police officers and teachers in the city are bumped up - weighted upwards - compared to the wages of the same staff elsewhere.

It’s been in place for more than a century in London, with the backing of unions.

It means that a current employee under the weighting will typically earn £9,600 (€11,500) more in inner London, and £6,500 (€7,777) more in outer London, as compensation for their high rents and mortgages, and other goods and services.

To give one example, NHS staff who live in central London are entitled to a 20% uplift of pay, those working just outside London are entitled to a 15% uplift, and those that work in the fringe zone of London are entitled to a 5% uplift.

The weighting scheme is also aimed at retaining key workers in London, where demand is high, and ensuring they don’t move out to a cheaper part of the UK.

The system is not in place for the private sector, and in any case, there is a general appreciation that salaries for those workers in London are higher than elsewhere anyway.

Now, there is discussion about introducing a similar Dublin weighting pay system here.

Dublin-based businessman Paschal Taggart will address a Career Horizons Expo at the RDS next Friday, April 4, in which he will present his ideas on introducing a weighted allowance in a bid to address the key worker shortage in the capital.

He said it is “illogical that a teacher or a guard or a nurse in west Kerry or Donegal gets the same pay and conditions as they do working in central Dublin”.

Is he right?

Certainly, €1,000 will go an awful lot further in those backwaters than it will in the capital. Wouldn’t an extra payment to Dublin staff merely be a case of exercising equity?

At this point, my Cork friends, I sense a rising anger in the Real Capital. What about us, you demand. And rightly so.

If a Dublin weighting were to be introduced, there is surely a similar case for a Cork weighting too.

After all, we may not be quite as expensive as Dublin, but we’re doing our damnedest to keep up with them on that front. This week, it emerged that the price of the average second-hand three-bed semi in Cork city has soared to €395,000, way above the national average of €235,458, although still way behind the average in Dublin of €558,250.

At the risk of complicating matters, therefore, there is surely a case for a Dublin weighting AND a Cork weighting system, where salaries here are not quite bumped up to the Dublin level, but are higher than elsewhere in Ireland.

Even then, it would be human nature for the Cork city teachers to point jealously at the higher salaries of their Dublin brethren, rather than at the lower salaries of their Donegal counterparts.

Of course, all of this raises the spectre of teachers living and working in Cork city being paid more than their colleagues in Cork county for doing the same job.

Then again, I would suggest it’s broadly true that teachers in major cities have to deal with higher class sizes and more behavioural issues than those in the county.

One crucial aspect to introduce at this point is the unions, for, as we know, very little can be achieved in the public sector here without the workers’ representatives on board. Where would they stand?

As long ago as 2004, in the Celtic Tiger era, there were calls for a Dublin weighting for nurses.

And, asked recently if the Garda Representative Association (GRA) would support a weighted allowance for its members, a spokesman said it “would certainly be in favour of any initiative that eases financial pressure on our members during rising costs and inflation”.

Back in 2023, the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO), the country’s biggest teaching union, backed calls for an additional payment to compensate members for the higher cost of living in urban areas. However similar calls have been rejected by trade unions in the past, with leaders generally against the idea of drawing geographical distinctions between members.

At the time, then Tánaiste Micheál Martin, perhaps with an eye on his constituency base, suggested additional payments for public sector workers in Dublin would be “very, very challenging”.

Not quite a No, then, but the now Taoiseach is not renowned for voluntarily stepping into debates that are potted with landmines.

Opponents of weighting claim it would bring about a rural/urban divide, to which I would answer that one clearly exists anyway.

There is a compelling argument for a system of weighting to be introduced in this country, but whether a nation with so many competing interests butting heads can achieve it, is another matter entirely.