Teachers may sue over retirement cut
- Published: 09 November 2008
Source : Sunday Business Post
Teachers could take legal action over the budget decision to suspend an early retirement pilot scheme.
The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) said yesterday that it felt the decision was against the law. John White, general secretary of the ASTI, said the union had taken legal advice on the issue, which he said was ''one of the most draconian measures'' in Budget 2009, and was considering taking legal action on behalf of some of its members.
The early retirement scheme was introduced on a pilot basis and was under review, but it had been agreed that it would include teachers until the end of the 2008/09 school year. Despite that, it was suspended with immediate effect in the budget. The scheme allowed teachers to retire if they were having ''professional difficulties in their teaching duties'' or where their roles were ''surplus to requirement''.
White said that the ''ASTI believes its suspension, particularly in the context where the Department of Education and Science had agreed to extend the pilot scheme to cover those retiring on August 31, 2008 and on August 31, 2009, is against the law''.
He said that some teachers who would have taken early retirement this year decided to stay teaching for another year, as they thought they could avail of the scheme next year.
"[They] could justifiably claim that they were entitled to notice. The ASTI has received senior counsel's opinion that teachers sufficiently prejudiced by the immediate termination of the scheme could justly complain that they were entitled to notice. The ASTI, guided by counsel's opinion, will take whatever legal action is necessary," said White.
Speaking at an ASTI education conference in Dublin yesterday, White added that teachers were prepared for a long and tough battle over a range of budget cutbacks.
''The ASTI does not accept these cutbacks and we will fight and argue against them as long as they remain. This campaign will not be a short, sharp campaign - it will, in all probability, be an extended campaign, but we have the stomach for the fight and we intend to see these cuts reversed," he said.
