Prof Fitzgerald was speaking at an Industrial Relations News conference in Dublin today.

Speaking today, TUI General Secretary Peter MacMenamin said:

“At a time when we should be looking at our education system as the primary tool in re-skilling the thousands of people laid off every month, it appears that the Government remains intent on a complete asset-stripping of the system.

Spending in education is an investment in our future.

There is a very real risk here that our brightest and best young teachers will now emigrate to the UK where they believe they will have considerably improved chances of employment due to the size of the population.

For relatively modest short term financial gain, we will not only offer a stripped-down education system to our children but we will also lose a whole generation of our best young teachers in this ‘brain drain’.

We estimate that over 1,000 teachers will be lost at second level alone as a result of the cutbacks in the next academic year. This means that thousands of young graduates will have no option but to seek work in other jurisdictions where the importance of education is acknowledged.

We welcome Professor Fitzgerald’s comments and hope that Government will see the light in the coming weeks and months. Everybody acknowledges that we are facing extremely difficult economic times, but to continue to use the education system as something to pilfer more funding from will only exacerbate an already massive problem.”