NUNAN'S ADDRESS:THE EDUCATION system will continue to be grossly underfunded while the architects of economic catastrophe play golf in Spain or remain in hiding in the US, INTO general secretary Sheila Nunan told her union's annual conference yesterday.
She said citizens who had to cope with the banking crisis were being asked to believe that cutting salaries, suppressing recruitment and promotions, threatening pensions and annihilating the morale of decent hard-working men and women would solve our economic woes. Light-touch regulation was a euphemism for letting the lunatics run the asylum, she said.
“The education system will remain underfunded and our classrooms overcrowded. Child poverty will increase and ordinary working men and women face the challenge of making ends meet while the guilty are still not brought to justice.”
Congratulating the Minister on her appointment, Ms Nunan declared: “If you don’t believe half the things you’ve heard about teachers, we won’t believe half the things we’ve heard about you.”
Ms Nunan, in her first address as general secretary, accused the Government of cataclysmic mismanagement of the economy.
“Ninety-four years ago this month, our founding fathers and mothers declared the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies to be sovereign and indefeasible. Ninety-four years later, the Government has sold eighty thousand million worth of Ireland to foreign financiers and money lenders.
“In truth, the price of Nama and other State gifts to the swindlers we used to respectfully call the financial services industry will bleed as much from our country this century as the landlords did in the 19th century.
“Six years from the centenary of 1916, that is some betrayal of their heroic struggle for independence of which the trade union movement of the time was a part. James Connolly must be turning in his grave.”
Teachers were ambitious for the success of primary education, for their pupils, for the economy and for the nation, she continued.
“They need no lectures in patriotism. They don’t have to be told to don the green jersey. They know the contribution primary education makes and can continue to make to national recovery.’’
She said the Irish system’s quality remained one of our key advantages.
“The former Intel CEO Craig Barrett is right – we need to invest more, not less in education. Yet despite underinvestment – our teachers, proud public servants, turn inadequate investment into an overall competitive advantage. The quality of our education is a significant competitive advantage. And it is delivered by teachers who are proud to be public servants in spite of government underinvestment.”
The truth, she said, was that Ireland’s public service worked with fewer workers and less investment than many similar-sized economies.
“But I am not prepared to stick my head in the sand and say there is no room for change, improvement or transformation particularly in an area such as education which can if properly serviced be the engine of economic recovery.”
In mathematics, Irish students were in the average achievement range, ranked 22nd of 57 countries in the most recent OECD assessment.
“Average isn’t good enough but an average grade is a remarkable return on one of the lowest investments in education anywhere.”
