Responding to Minister Quinn’s comments regarding the reversal of some cuts by finding money elsewhere within the education budget, TUI today warned that schools in the public school system can sustain no further damage if they are provide an adequate frontline service to students.
Speaking this morning, TUI General Secretary John MacGabhann said:

“TUI notes the Minister’s comments that any reversal of particular cuts will have an impact on other areas of education.

If, as is suggested, money has to be found elsewhere within the education budget, it cannot be at the expense of those non-DEIS, non-fee paying schools already targeted for swingeing cuts on numerous occasions in recent years and now struggling to provide a basic frontline service to students. Teachers and principals have been hugely flexible in helping to paper over some of the cracks, but the service can sustain no further damage, particularly with a new raft of cutbacks already due to become effective from the start of the next school year.

This situation highlights that the level of investment in Irish education is wholly inadequate to meet the ongoing needs of children, society and the economy, particularly in those communities that never reaped the benefit of the boom years.

Even acknowledging our current economic predicament, TUI urges the Government to look on education spending as investment in our young people’s future rather than simply a list of numbers on an inflexible balance sheet.”