Public expenditure cuts having an impact on teacher training and future education.
By law, every child in the country must attend a school up to the age of fifteen. Constitutionally, the State is obliged to provide an education for those children..
While the State has an obligation to provide education, the constitution can not make any guarantee on the quality of the education provided. The recent government budget imposed spending cuts across all sectors of public expenditure. National teacher school training is now faced with severe reductions.
President of the students' union at St Patrick's Training College in Dublin Pat Murphy says that primary education is already impoverished following successive cuts and is now being attacked again.
Any cutback in our college will obviously affect primary education in years to come.
Pat Murphy believes that the results of these cuts will be felt directly in schools in years to come with larger class sizes and inadequate provisions for dealing with children with special needs.
At a meeting in St Patrick's College, there was strong opposition voiced to any cuts in education. Frank Murphy of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) says that there is no room for cutbacks in the education system. He says that the government can not save money at the expense of disadvantaged children. He appeals for the Minister of Education Gemma Hussey to reconsider the cuts and says that ultimately it is the children that will suffer.
There is no fat on the education system. We're operating a skeleton system.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 10 March 1983.
