O'Keeffe angry at 'alarmist' cut claims from TUI
EDUCATION Minister Batt O'Keeffe broke from his holidays yesterday to react angrily to what he called "mischievous" claims about the scale of teacher job losses in secondary schools.
The minister issued a statement describing the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) as being "unnecessarily alarmist".
However, he was accused of offering little clarification on how many teachers would actually lose their jobs.
The TUI said that second-level schools could lose up to 3,500 teaching posts this autumn because of budgetary cutbacks.
The 3,500 figure is provisional and based on the situation at the start of June -- further allocations will continue for some months.
A spokesman for Mr O'Keeffe said the final position on teacher numbers would not become clear until much later this year when the allocation process had been completed.
"So the TUI's claims at this stage in the process are not in the public interest and serve only to cause anxiety to parents.
Redeployed
"No full-term teacher with a permanent contract will lose their job, although they may be redeployed to fill a vacancy in another school."
The spokesman said the figures excluded the bulk of the allocations for special needs and language support teachers which were now being processed.
He pointed out that between January and May this year, 1,400 posts went into the system over and above the initial allocation of teachers.
TUI president Don Ryan said the minister's comments offered "precious little clarification on what is a hugely serious issue with the new school year just weeks away".
He said the TUI understood that the department already had the figures for the special needs allocation for schools and it was difficult to understand why they had not been included in the figures published on the department's website this week
"We ask once again that the department quantifies the number of teachers that they estimate will be taken out of the system in the coming school year. It is not good enough to state that they will not know until late in the year. Every pupil has to be catered for from the first day of term."
The TUI estimates that even with the allocations yet to be made in special needs and language support, the final loss will be in excess of 2,000 teachers, compared with the last school year.
- Katherine Donnelly
