16th January 2009

Untold billions for banks while vital funding cut from primary schools.

The INTO said today that the government's decision to take Anglo Irish Bank into public ownership at an unknown cost and risk had to be seen against savage budget cutbacks on primary education and threatened cuts to teachers' pay and pensions.

The union's general secretary John Carr said the bailout would stiffen the resolve of public sector workers to resist being scapegoated in forthcoming national partnership talks. He said it would also mean opposition to the education cutbacks would continue.

"For months, teachers and parents listened to the Minister for Education and Science defending cutbacks in education," said Carr. He said last year schools were told by the Minister the public finances were so bad that teaching jobs had to be axed, books had to be taken from poor children and computers couldn't be bought for schools.

"Now his government with the stroke of a pen can find billions to bail out a failed bank. Some of this bail out money is education funding that the Education Minister took out of cash-strapped primary schools," said Carr.

According to Carr, the potential savings to government from the education cutbacks were in the region of 70 million euro. "That is less than the secret loan of more than 80 million held by one director of Anglo Irish Bank." Mr Carr said the penny pinching of the government when it came to funding primary education stood in stark contrast to the "largesse available to the golden circle".

He said the public will not forget the ease with which Anglo Irish Bank was bailed out with tax payers' money compared to dogged government opposition to protests against the education cuts. "People are not fools," he said. "They will not accept that special needs children, Travellers and children with no English will have to pay the price for bank bail outs."

"Neither will hardworking public servants like teachers accept one law for a rich and powerful elite and another for everyone else," said Carr. "Those on modest incomes will not accept pay cuts and attacks on their pensions to pick up the tab for banks that were little more than badly run casinos."