O'Keeffe denies he misled Dáil on teacher job losses

THE MINISTER for Education Batt O’Keeffe has denied Fine Gael claims that he misled the Dáil on job losses in primary and secondary schools.

Fine Gael education spokesman Brian Hayes said Mr O’Keeffe had last November said there would be just 200 fewer primary school teachers and 200 fewer post-primary teachers from 2009.

“Now, he admits in a Parliamentary Question that there will actually be 1,300 job losses with, this year, 300 fewer primary school posts and 509 fewer post-primary posts,” Mr Hayes said.

Mr Hayes had asked the Minister whether he still took the position that 400 jobs would be lost from this month. In his reply in the Dáil this week, Mr O’Keeffe said it was envisaged there would be a reduction of 200 to 300 jobs at primary level. At second level, a reduction of about 1,000, but that not all of these jobs would go in this academic year.

Mr O’Keeffe had “come clean” for the first time on the extent of the job losses, but it was too little too late Mr Hayes said. “Batt O’Keeffe’s attempts to hide the fact that frontline services are in the forefront of education cutbacks have failed, and it is clear that those at the coalface are taking the hit,” he said.

However, Mr O’Keeffe said Mr Hayes was being “typically disingenuous” in his accusations. “This is another in a long line of ‘take no decision that will annoy anyone anywhere’ type statements from the prolific Fine Gael TD. My approach to this issue has been open and transparent from the start.

“I’ve published interim information on my department’s website as it became available from schools. In fact, the information in the reply to Deputy Hayes is the latest data available. While this information isn’t fully complete, at this stage it’s not anticipated that the final position will be significantly at variance with the figures in the reply to the parliamentary question.”