IPPN

Published: 16 April 2009

Source: independent.ie

'I hope I live to see the day when people will laud the tough decisions we took at this time'

THE troops of teachers gathered in Gotham-by-the-Lee were in uproar. Some jokers in government have begun to pick their pockets, and they weren't at all happy.

And so earlier this week the Bat Signal was seen shining in the night sky over the Rochestown Park Hotel on the outskirts of Cork city.

The maddened members of the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) were in dire need of a superhero. And yesterday afternoon right on cue (or in fact about half-an-hour late), up roared Battman, cape at the ready. Alas, the Minister for Education and Science was the last person the teachers had in mind. As far as large swathes of the country's educators are concerned, Batt O'Keeffe is the Baddie.

On Tuesday he was lashed in Letterkenny by the INTO, then castigated in Killarney by the ASTI. And now Batt's penitential pilgrimage had brought him onto his own home turf, a few miles from his home in Ballincollig, and onto his old stomping-ground, the teachers' union of which he was once a member.

Arriving at the hotel to address the last of the three teachers' conferences, the minister tried to put a brave face on it. "I expect that I'll get, I suppose, a very mild welcome to say the least," he said with a tiny flash of optimism.

Alas for Battered Batt, whatever the INTO and ASTI could do, the TUI were determined to do better and louder.

The delegates had whiled away the hour before his arrival by snacking on large chunks of raw meat and passing emergency motions on the hated pensions levy and the freeze on appointments and promotions.

The mood was angry, the muinteoiri were on the march.

If Batt expected a bit of a break on his home patch, he was swiftly disabused of this notion as soon as he entered the packed hall. There was a tense silence as he walked towards the podium, and then the first heckles rose from the back.

"Shame on the minister!" roared one, as other teachers held up placards -- 'Stop Vandalising Education', 'Short Term Cuts, Long Term Damage'. And as Batt began to speak, a dozen or so teachers walked out in protest.

The hostile atmosphere seemed to fluster Batt who delivered his speech hesitantly -- after all, he had no juicy apples for the teachers.

"In making the adjustments in spending and taxation, we have done our utmost to be as fair and as balanced as possible," he explained, but this was met with a chorus of jeers.

This 400-plus mob of mutinous muinteoiri would not be appeased. At times, Batt could barely be heard over periodic heckles of "Resign!"

Nor did the minister's plea -- "I understand how difficult it is for you" -- cut any ice, as more jeering broke out among the angry delegates.

If Batt's reception at the previous two conferences had been frosty, then this was torrid.

And this was before the guns of the TUI's president, Don Ryan had peppered him with fiery words. In contrast to Batt, the union president was greeted like he was a combination of Barack Obama and the four members of Take That. His address was punctuated by five standing ovations, over 40 bursts of applause and numerous outbreaks of cheering.

And Don got stuck right in, getting his audience up on their feet almost straightaway with his accusation.

"I listened very carefully to your explanation for your actions," he lectured Batt. "But it is clearly of 'the dog ate my homework' variety," he added as the teachers roared and cheered like a bunch of rowdy schoolkids.

And they hollered again when their pugilistic president accused the Government of opting for cutbacks that were "hostile, dreadful, unfair and hypocritical", and again when he thundered how "the opportunities of the most educationally and socially marginalised of the nations' children were sacrificed to bail out the corrupt financial institutions of the country".

Batt looked a little shaken in the face of the onslaught, but he gamely took his punishment on the chin, and lingered afterwards to calmly put his case to a group of irate teachers who collared him beside the podium for an extra-curricular moaning session.

Before he left for the bucolic bliss of Ballincollig, Batt was philosophical about the hostile reception he had received.

"I suspected it was going to be the warmest and yet the coolest that I was going to receive, because it's the final conference and this one took notice of what happened in the other two," he reckoned.

But despite the fireworks, Batt was not for turning.

"We're certainly not in a contest of popularity. We have to take the most severe and stringent measures that are going to hurt people in their pockets; measures that are not going to make us popular with the people in the short term," he said.

"I hope I live to see the day when people will laud the tough decisions we took at this time".

However, he diplomatically tiptoed around the touchy subject of possible strike action from the teachers' unions.

"Does disruption of the schools on a daily basis make a difference to what we want to achieve in the long run?" he asked. "I'm asking that we would all be sensible".

Thus Battman, aka Captain Sensible, survived his first tour of duty in the conference warzone.

- LISE HAND