Suppressed fury surfaces in reaction to O'Keeffe

ANALYSIS:The level of anger among primary school teachers bodes ill for the Government, writes SEÁN FLYNN.

THE MOST striking features of the walkout by some INTO delegates yesterday was the relative youth of those taking part. Most were in their mid-20s. Virtually all had a story to tell about how the collapse of the banking sector had impinged on their daily lives.

Anna O’Loughlin, a 26-year-old teacher at St Gabriel’s, Stoneybatter, Dublin, told of how she purchased a three-bed terraced house for €300,000 at the height of the boom. Today, she is mired in negative equity and saddled with a repayment of €1,648.51 per month.

To compound the problem, she is locked into a fixed-rate mortgage at 4.8 per cent with a €6,000 escape penalty. She lives – or, perhaps more accurately, survives – on about €94 per week after meeting her repayments. She reckons last week’s Budget will cost her an additional €400 per month.

Anna, a language support teacher, has also seen the impact of the education cuts at close quarters. Her school is designated as disadvantaged but this has not stemmed the flow of cruel cutbacks. About 50 per cent of the 260 students are foreign nationals, mostly Romanians and Poles. But the number of language support teachers at her school has been cut from five to three.

At yesterday’s conference anger over education cuts combined with resentment over pay cuts to deliver a seething conference hall. Much of this was directed not personally at Batt O’Keeffe but at a Government seen as cosying up to what INTO general secretary John Carr called the “capitalist criminals”.

Carr, who steps down next year, delivered a bravura speech spiced with references to the “Seán FitzPatrick school of accounting’’ and the “economic traitors’’ in our midst. Every reference to the bankers and the property speculators unleashed a huge round of applause. When, early on in his speech, he told how teachers “resent having their pockets picked to bail out the bankers’’, the audience rose to their feet. It was the first of several standing ovations.

For O’Keeffe, in his first round of teacher conferences, this was a baptism of fire. His speech, a pitch for national solidarity at a time of national economic crisis, was received with a stony silence. During it, several delegates hoisted placards condemning the pension levies, the education cuts and the “bully boy’’ approach of the Government.

Afterwards, the Minister appeared unfazed. As a former inter-county footballer, he explained how his broad shoulders could take a knock.

But he also decided that attack was the best form of defence. Asked about Carr’s assertion that the education system had been asset-stripped, he said such comments were not unexpected from the leader of a teacher union pursuing its own agenda.

To date, O’Keeffe has managed to see off ferocious opposition from the teaching sector. His decision to increase class sizes drew 100,000 to the streets in protest but it has not been rescinded. The various cuts imposed on library facilities, language supports and Traveller initiatives have been variously described as “shameful’’ and “immoral’’. But they too have remained in place.

Yesterday, the Minister got up close and personal with people like Anna O’Loughlin, coping with the personal difficulties which have flowed from the education cutbacks and the Budget. In an unusual move, he actually discussed Ms Loughlin’s financial circumstances for 15 minutes after his speech.

There was no meeting of minds. Anna O’Loughlin stressed her own dire straits. The Minister repeated his mantra of no alternative to the pain, that we must all put our shoulders to the wheel.

But yesterday’s INTO conference exposed the huge chasm which has opened between the Cabinet table and the ordinary people.

By nature and inclination, primary teachers are not a band of rebels. If they are this angry, what can the mood be like in the rest of society?