Betrayed by a cynical government

MORE damning evidenceof the lack of rationale in the Government’s frenzied cutbacks — a costly legacy for the taxpayer of the Coalition’s cynical pre-election vote-buying spree — is manifest in the blatant neglect of one of Ireland’s leading teacher training colleges.

Amid a blizzard of complaints about appalling conditions in primary schools across the country, a leading educationalist has taken the unusual step of publicly voicing his anger and frustration at the fall-out from the swingeing cuts.

The latest criticism of the administration is all the more scathing because Dr Peadar Cremin, President of St Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, openly accuses the Government of wasting public money through its "indefensible" failure to develop campus facilities.

Instead of funding new buildings, Education Minister Noel Dempsey is signing a weekly cheque for €6,000 to pay for rooms at a local hotel, where classes are being held because of gross over-crowding in the college.

The rent alone comes to €150,000 a year. Manifestly, this is lunatic fringe planning and a shocking waste of public money.

In 25 years, the Limerick college has seen no new building. Yet, in response to Government requests to fill a national teacher shortage, it is currently catering for 2,300 full-time students on a campus with capacity for only 800.

Along with other major colleges of education, St Mary's has been devastated by the Government's embargo on new third-level buildings.

This moratorium came into force last November, six months after the election was bought with promises that Ministers knew would soon be broken because the economy was already slowing when the pledges were given.

So atrocious are conditions in some primary schools that pupils narrowly escaped serious injury when part of a ceiling collapsed recently at a school in Junior Minister Willie O'Dea's Limerick constituency.

Many other schools are dilapidated, cold, leaking and rat-infested. Despite Education Minister Noel Dempsey's claim that only a small proportion of schools in the building programme are in a really bad state, examples of appalling disrepair are evident everywhere.

Some schools are in such a shameful state that local people have to raise money to pay for essential running costs and basic materials.

In a rented prefab at one national school, pupils had to construct home-made chairs to replace benches made from wooden planks and propped up by bricks.

The sense of betrayal is tangible amid the remnants of the School of Music in Cork, where students are scattered in rented classrooms across the city because the Government has reneged on an electoral promise and is actively blocking a public-private plan for a new school.

Meanwhile, in Limerick, Dr Cremin recalls that in 1999 the then Minister for Education Micheál Martin wrote to inform him that the physical development of the college was a priority for his department, and its contribution greatly valued.

Since then, nothing has happened.

The dead hand of Government should be removed from education.

In stark contrast with the Celtic Tiger era, when politicians liked to boast about the excellence of Irish students and graduates, the very foundations of a system vital to Ireland's future are being undermined.

The Government's appalling neglect of teacher education, and its betrayal of the rights of long-suffering children, who are crammed into squalid, run-down schools, tells us much about the cynicism of a cosy Coalition arrangement which is based on shallow principles of political expediency.