Croke Park Hours for Primary Teachers, Explained

Croke Park hours are the additional non-teaching hours primary teachers work each year outside class time. They have been part of the job since 2011, they are where a lot of whole-school planning actually happens, and in October 2026 they are also at the centre of industrial action, which is probably why you are reading this. The rules first, then the current situation.

A note on October 2026

Since 5 October 2026, INTO members have been engaged in a work-to-rule as part of a pay dispute, following the expiry of the public service pay agreement at the end of June 2026. Under the union’s directives, members are not performing Croke Park hours, and are also not attending staff meetings or formal parent-teacher meetings held outside normal school hours. A national strike took place on 14 October. If you are an INTO member, your union’s current directives are the thing to follow, and into.ie carries the up-to-date position. Everything below describes the standing arrangements that the agreements provide for.

What they are, and where the name comes from

The Croke Park Agreement (the Public Service Agreement 2010 to 2014, negotiated in Croke Park) introduced additional working hours across the public service. For primary teachers that meant 36 additional hours per school year, worked outside tuition time so that none of it reduces class contact. The arrangement was carried forward under the Haddington Road and Lansdowne Road agreements and remains in place today. The governing circulars are 0008/2011, 0052/2014 and 0042/2016.

The 26/10 split

A portion of the 36 hours can be worked away from whole-school sessions, and that portion grew in steps: 5 hours from 2014/15 (Circular 0052/2014), 8 from 2016/17, and 10 hours since 2017/18 (Circular 0042/2016). So the hours now divide as:

• 26 hours for whole-school activities. The circular’s list: school planning, continuous professional development, induction, pre and post school supervision, policy development, staff meetings, and nationally planned or school-arranged in-service.
• Up to 10 hours for “planning and development work other than on a whole-school basis”, as approved by management and subject to verification. Planning done individually or in smaller groups, in tranches of no less than 30 minutes, outside normal school hours, on a timeframe set by school management. This is the portion that recognises that preparation for your own class is real professional work.

The circular expects “consultation at school level as to the optimum usage of this block of hours”, so the calendar of Croke Park hours in your school is something the staff should see and discuss, usually at the start of the year.

How they are scheduled

• Outside normal tuition time, across the roughly 183 days the school is open
• In blocks of one, two or three hours (a typical pattern is a monthly two-hour slot after school)
• With the agreement of the whole staff, up to two full days of the hours can be worked outside the school’s 183-day calendar instead, for example a planning day in late August
• Part-time and job-sharing teachers work the hours pro-rata

Croke Park hours and your planning

Two connections worth knowing.

First, the 26 whole-school hours are where the planning decisions that shape your year get made: the school’s enactment-area choice, agreed planning formats, methodologies and assessment approaches. The 2026 preparation guidance leans heavily on whole-school agreement as the way to cut duplication in every teacher’s workload, and Croke Park time is in practice where those agreements happen. If your school is reviewing its planning approach, that conversation belongs in this time; we wrote up what the updated PLTA guidance asks of recorded preparation as a starting point.

Second, the 10 individual hours exist precisely for planning and development beyond whole-school sessions. Long-term planning in September sits naturally here; our September working method for long-term plans is built around exactly that kind of block.

Common questions

Do the hours still have to be done? The requirement remains part of the agreements and circulars. During the current industrial action, INTO members are following union directives instead; where that lands is a matter for the dispute’s resolution, so check the INTO’s current guidance.

Can a principal use the hours for anything at all? The circulars list the intended purposes (planning, CPD, policy, meetings, and so on), and expect staff consultation on the calendar. The 10-hour portion is for other-than-whole-school planning as approved by management.

Are parent-teacher meetings Croke Park hours? No. Circular 0042/2016 states the 36 hours “are separate from the existing arrangements in relation to parent/teacher and staff meetings”. Staff meetings are different: they appear in the list of uses, and schools may use some of the hours to remove the old “half in” element where meetings ate into tuition time.

I’m job-sharing. How many hours do I owe? Pro-rata: half the post, half the hours.

Where are my school’s hours written down? The circular asks schools to “record the full usage of the additional hours and publicise this in the normal school communication to parents”, so there should be a published calendar for the year; ask for it if you have never seen one.

For the planning work those hours hold, from the whole-school agreements down to your own fortnightly plans, the complete guide to primary school teacher planning maps every document a teacher keeps.

Make the planning part lighter, whatever time it happens in: three fortnightly plans, a real Cúntas Míosúil and long-term plans, free for 30 days, no card needed. Create your first plan free.