Ahern tells ASTI to make up its mind or he will not negotiate

The Taoiseach has warned the ASTI that "they had better make up their minds" about its attitude to benchmarking and the PPF, otherwise he could not and would not negotiate with it.

If there were issues on bench marking which needed to be clarified, or anything in the Labour Court recommendation or anything else under the industrial relations mechanism to try to resolve the issue, "this Government is ready to deal with them. However, it takes two, and it is time the ASTI played its part."

Mr Ahern said there would be no negotiations if the organisation was intent on breaking the PPF and "making a nonsense of benchmarking". He was "a little annoyed" at comments by a former president of the ASTI, who stated that "ASTI is not interested in benchmarking or in the PPF".

"If somebody says it is all about 30 per cent, breaking the PPF and making a nonsense of benchmarking, they are barking up the wrong tree and I will not, cannot and have no intention of negotiating with them. They had better make up their minds."

The Fine Gael leader, Mr Michael Noonan, during the Order of Business, said the Government had been acting like a "hard-nosed employer. It is about time it acted as a national government. It has wider responsibilities than those of an employer."

Warning that the Government "should not make cannon fodder out of the children of Ireland", he recognised it "is on the end of a greasy pole and is in a difficult position". He said the Minister for Education, Dr Woods, in his contribution to the two-day debate on the ASTI dispute, did not do anything to help the resolution of a difficult dispute.

The Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, said "the country has lost all confidence in the Minister's ability and that of his Department to resolve this dispute on their own".

He called on the Taoiseach to take the initiative by inviting ASTI representatives to Government Buildings to explore the possibilities contained in the Labour Court recommendation. Mr Ahern said the Government had accepted the Labour Court recommendations within two days of its issuing them. Among them was one that a non-paid forum should look at issues which had changed teaching fundamentally in the past 37 years.

The Government also accepted that, and the facilitator to the process recommended that the ASTI should put that to its members. Unfortunately, the ASTI did not consider that.

At no time since last Friday, when the Labour Court issued its findings, had the ASTI sought clarification. "If the ASTI wants to adhere to the industrial relations machinery of the State, I and my excellent Minister for Education and Science are willing to assist it."

Mr Noonan said it was not good for "civil society when the children of a country are demonstrating outside the gates of the national parliament. That is very bad." He urged the Taoiseach to say he was in favour of further clarification of the judgment of the Labour Court and that he would be involved in bilateral talks to position it.

"The sides are not that far apart but because of the circumstance in which we now find ourselves, with the Minister for Education digging a bigger hole for everybody last night, the Taoiseach should make some approach of a bilateral nature."

There was a solution there because "otherwise the Taoiseach is saying that, come hell or high water, he is going to score a victory over the ASTI and run examinations of doubtful outcome when it comes to corrections.

"He has very little time left and it is a heavy responsibility for a government to confine its activities to that of a hard-nosed employer without looking at its wider responsibilities to pa rents, students, teachers and the wider community."

Mr Ahern said however it was for the ASTI to seek clarification from the Labour Court. "My understanding is that in rapid time they were out on the airwaves rejecting it." He heard an ASTI spokesperson say on the radio the ASTI voted on benchmarking last November, "but unfortunately we did not conclude the arrangements on benchmarking until late on the night of December 4th".

The Government won a division endorsing its approach to the ASTI dispute.

A Fine Gael private member's motion condemning the Government for its failure to resolve the dispute and urging teachers to co-operate with the examinations, was defeated by 71 votes to 66.