Go raibh maith agat, a Thánaiste. Ba mhaith liom fáilte a chur romhat féin agus roimh d’oifigí anseo inniu go dtí Comhdháil Aontas Múinteoirí Éireann.

Tánaiste, you and your officials are welcome to the annual congress of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland. I wish to congratulate you on your appointment as Minister for Education and Skills and I note that you are the first Tánaiste since Seán T. O’Kelly in 1939 to hold the education portfolio. For the record, Tánaiste, his tenure lasted only 19 days.

In my response to your address I will direct my remarks to you as Minister for Education and Skills and also as deputy leader of this country  

I think it is important, Tánaiste, to point to the record of your immediate predecessor as Minister for Education and Science. During his term of office and in the name of so-called patriotism

•    funding was withdrawn from disadvantaged schools
•    grants for alternative programmes were slashed
•    capitation funding for Traveller children was slashed
•    book grants were abolished
•    school transport charges were increased and
•    language support was reduced

The main party of government of which you are a member agreed for politically expedient reasons to restore some funding to redress some of these shameful cutbacks. A school year has almost passed since commitments were made in the Revised Programme for Government to a full restoration of grants - grants for alternative programmes, physics, chemistry, music activities and schoolbooks. Where is the funding you committed to last October? Our schools have not received a single cent of this vital funding. Neither has there been any restoration of language support teachers to schools where more than 50% of pupils do not speak English as a first language.

Attend to this, Tánaiste. Immediately!



As part of the systematic dismantling and destruction of public education in the last 18 months over 1000 teachers were lost to our second level schools. As we predicted a year ago, this has resulted in fewer programme options and the loss of subjects, particularly the sciences - an area your government continues to pretend to prioritise. All the rhetoric about the ‘Smart Economy’ sounds stupid when this is allowed to continue. The allocation of 500 jobs between primary and post-primary over three years is totally inadequate. Like most of what your department does, there has been no transparency in this process, and your department conveniently omitted the further education sector from the allocation.

You cannot cut your way out of recession, Minister. Our schools and colleges are understaffed and education is severely damaged.

Tánaiste, you must restore to schools and colleges their full complement of staff.


Your predecessor, who was reported to be the ‘Tough Nut’ and hard man of the cabinet, was responsible for these cutbacks. A minister charged with the care of the children of this country, as you are now, should not earn a tag more appropriate to a front row forward than a frontline politician.

Tánaiste, work with us, not against us. Work with us in an atmosphere of shared responsibility and mutual respect.

Tánaiste, in our meeting with you last week, we prioritised the lifting of the moratorium on the filling of promotional posts. These positions are the very backbone on which our schools and colleges operate. The moratorium has also dismantled adult education services. Adult Education Officers, Adult Literacy Organisers, Adult Education Directors and VTOS Coordinators are not being replaced.

 Such provision is critical and it is pitiful that the government has resorted to such insane measures. It confirms how far removed your department is from reality.

Minister, you have just announced a token alleviation of the moratorium but in many cases the roof has already caved in. You are now trying to prop it up with matchsticks.

Our directive, Minister, will still apply to any post which remains unfilled.


Our concerns about Special Education Needs provision and support for dealing with pupil disruption have not gone away. In fact, the needs have become greater. Public sector schools, other than fee-charging schools, carry a disproportionate responsibility in meeting the needs of disruptive and Special Needs pupils. Fee-charging schools take on little or none of this responsibility, yet you give tens of millions of euro to an already-privileged but exclusionary school system.

Tánaiste, so much for a just society. Give the resources to schools which meet their responsibilities to society.

Minister, let’s deal with the illusion that teachers enjoy permanent teaching positions. Let me provide you with some facts: 90% of teachers employed in Norway and Austria are permanent teachers; the figure for Denmark is 97%. In our sector in Ireland only 68.2% of teachers are permanent and listen, Minister, more than half our teachers under 30 years of age are part-time. Let’s dispel the myth, cultivated by ignorance, that teaching is a secure employment. Minister, we need a mechanism to secure the employment of current fixed-term teachers. Why, Minister is one in every three teachers part-time? Why, Minister, are there no permanent teaching jobs advertised any longer? We know the student population is set to grow in coming years. So why are our members on permanent probation?

Minister, create permanent teaching jobs for our young teachers and lecturers. You claim that education cannot be exempted from cuts but this is something you can do. Do it right now, Minister.


Let me advise you on two other major concerns we have in respect of our part-time teachers and lecturers. Firstly, Tánaiste, we will not allow rogue and contrived interpretations of the Part-Time acts by employers and your Department’s failure to prevent abuse and breaking of European and Irish law. We have already advised many of our members not to sign contracts which contain offending clauses. It is not good enough that we must resort to lodging cases with Rights’ Commissioners while your department sits on its hands. When it comes to Whole School Evaluation and subject inspection, you’re not found wanting in imposing regulation.

Minister, regulate the application of the law in this matter.  


Secondly, we will not tolerate the race-to-the bottom policy which is emerging of yellow-packing the teaching profession. We will not tolerate this insidious development which appears to be supported by your department, wherein teaching and lecturing posts are being downgraded. This is happening in the case of ‘teaching-only’ contracts in the Institutes of Technology and in  ESOL, BTEI, Adult Literacy and Youthreach. There is no grade of ‘tutor’ in the teaching profession.

Minister, this is not a tutors’ conference. This is a teachers’ and lecturers’ conference.

Your own department’s position on this matter is equivocal, at best.  Minister, we will not allow any new grade or title for qualified teachers and lectures to be introduced as a device to underpay our members.


Minister, there has been a distasteful attack on teachers and lecturers in this country in the last 18 months. The latest example is the attempt by the Institutes of Technology Ireland to influence the Hunt Group in order to undermine the academic contract. There is an ignorant denigration of the Institute of Technology sector currently being engaged in by some ill-informed commentators in business, the media, and, disgracefully the Higher Education Authority. This undermining of the sector is designed to extract changes to our members’ contracts.

The IOTs have made an immense contribution in this country to skills development, in particular through apprentice education. As the economy has declined, so has the number of registered apprentices. Minister, we will oppose any knee-jerk reaction to the downturn in apprentice numbers. We will seek to ensure that the economy has a ready supply of qualified apprentices. Cooperate with us, Tánaiste, in ensuring the survival of this valuable asset to economic recovery.

We have witnessed similar attempts at second level to undermine the role and public respect for teachers. We know, and you know, from independent surveys such as the Talis report, the OECD Education at a Glance report and, most recently, the Teaching Council survey that teachers in this country are highly valued. These reports show that the public can be assured of a high quality service from teachers and lecturers despite this government’s failure to value and support them. What use to you and the public is a demoralised and angered teaching profession?

Minister, it’s time to call the dogs off.


Amongst several issues that your department has reneged on, are the failure to honour Labour Court recommendations, including the claim for incremental credit under Labour Court recommendation 18366, the Cork Institute of Technology Rights’ Commissioners decision and the Labour Court recommendation for directors of VEC Outdoor Education Centres. What hope do we have if a state department, having consented to a process of independent adjudication, now refuses to honour the outcome?

Minister, sort these issues out immediately.


Tánaiste, we welcome the announcement that the training element of FÁS will come under your remit as Minister for Education and Skills. I agree with much of what you have said. This will present all of us with many opportunities and challenges. We know you carry a huge amount of experience in the area of labour activation and retraining from your previous ministry. The transfer of the training portfolio to you will allow resources to flow into the Further and IoT sectors. It will also allow for the removal of the obstacles that impede the development of both sectors, such as the cap on numbers in further education colleges. We received unanimous support from the Dáil Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education for the removal of this artificial impediment and we expect you to address this immediately. We can be supportive and pro-active in developing and providing reskilling and retraining initiatives. However, along with removing the cap on numbers, it is essential that further education is recognised as a discrete sector within your department and that the resources agreed in July 2008 are provided.


Tánaiste, I wish now to address you in your role as deputy leader of this country. I want to remind you why the delegates here today and all of our members are seething with anger. Their pay has been cut on two occasions. Their pensions are threatened. The education service in which they work has been decimated. And you are now telling us that worse could come.

This is an outrage, Minister. If your government thinks we are going to continue to take it, you are badly mistaken.

All of this is happening to rectify the mismanagement of this country by your government. And neither you nor any of your colleagues in government has decency to admit your huge mistakes. We are outraged by your government’s arrogance. This is totally and absolutely your fault, Minister, and your government’s fault.

This is an ignominious time in the history of this country, a time when the life chances of citizens, their children and grandchildren have been sacrificed to save the necks of those who have committed treason against this country. This treacherous behaviour has been going on for decades in this country, mostly under the watch of a political party of which you are now the deputy leader.

Yesterday, Tánaiste, this congress resoundingly rejected the proposed public sector agreement. It is a massive con job. It is another attempt to rescue the country on the backs of the education system, its teachers, and public sector workers generally.


When we chose teaching as a career - many decades ago in the case of some of us - it was not about looking after Number One, unlike the unscrupulous characters that your government has given refuge to. No other civilised country would tolerate this. Is it any wonder, Tánaiste, we are seething with anger?  


We are not going to engage in the bogus transformation of the education system sought by your government because its purpose is clearly not to improve the quality of education in this country. We are not afraid of reform: on the contrary, we have always embraced reform and we will continue to do so. We have developed and pioneered programmes in every sector of education in which we are involved.

What we need, Minister, is a fundamental transformation of Irish society to get to the point where honesty and decency prevail; where addressing inequalities in society is the guiding principle of those who run this country. Teachers and lecturers want to part of this transformation and a transformation of the education system to eliminate cronyism and elitism so that each individual learner and citizen has an equal chance.

But we reject outright any attempt to worsen our daily work, dressed up as transformation. We are going to tell all our members what your department’s intentions are.

Listen, really carefully, please, Tánaiste: we are not going to allow any further impositions on teachers and lecturers.


Finally, Tánaiste, we will no longer be treated as the soft targets that we were in the past. If you want to preside over an education system and a public service that delivers high quality services, you and your cabinet colleagues will do well to remember this.

The only basis on which we can possibly work with you, Tánaiste, is if your government
•    treats us with respect
•    treats our jobs with respect
•    treats our contribution with respect and
•    treats our livelihoods with respect.

Thank you, Tánaiste. Thank you, colleagues.