Speaking today, Peter MacMenamin, General Secretary TUI said:

“The Government constantly claims that it has high ambitions for education provision and that it sees investment in education at all levels as highly important to economic success.  However, these figures show that they shamefully failed to invest in any strategic and meaningful manner when we were enjoying economic progress and budget surpluses. Now with this self generated need for budgetary constraint the government has embarked on a mission of curtailment hitting education services across the board with a significant blow. Cutbacks of the magnitude proposed will not just prevent further improvement but will negate many of the achievements to date.

The most important statistic, that of the proportion of national wealth [1] spent on education, shows that among other OECD countries, just the Slovak Republic and Greece spend less than us. Serious questions need to be posed as to why the situation was allowed to deteriorate in recent years.

Although the report launched today makes grave reading it is already outdated and an inadequate reflection of the level of investment by the Irish government in education.  

Ireland already lagged behind in its investment levels when compared with others. The current cutbacks make what was already far from good much worse. 

Essential support services such as psychological services at primary and post-primary level and the school completion programme  - both of which are directed at the weakest and most vulnerable in society -  are suffering significant cutbacks.    Other less obvious cuts include curriculum development and implementation, whole school planning and professional development. Although not as visible as other supports and services, these are key to improving and developing our education system.

In relation to lifelong learning and workplace initiatives it is worrying in the extreme that the report shows that workers in Ireland ratio of hours spent in job-related training is just 12%, compared to the OECD average of 25%. This is an indictment of the Government’s complete lack of commitment to the lifelong learning programme.

The level of lifelong remains among the Irish population between 25 and 64 remains pathetically and unacceptable low at 10% when compared to other countries such Sweeden, United Kingdom and Denmark where participation exceeds exceeds 19%.

This is frightening when one considers the need to upskill the labour force and improve functional literacy among the working age population (currently 23%). [2]  “