The general secretary of the ASTI, Mr Charlie Lennon, has been subjected to death threats, it emerged yesterday. Mr Lennon, who has been the trade union's public face since the ASTI began its campaign for a pay rise, said he had been subjected to abusive phone calls, letters and threats on his life. He made the revelation during an RTE radio interview when being questioned about an alleged assault on a parents' representative at the ASTI conference in Galway. He later declined to elaborate on when or how the threats were made. "It's like this, I made a decision when these things happened that we weren't going to go into discussion about them," he said.
"You have to take a common-sense approach to these things. I mean the world is full of strange people and the reality is you just . . . I'm not saying any more about it. I don't mean to be difficult but I just don't think it's something I want to focus on," he added. Mr Lennon said he had not taken the threats seriously. "The reality of it is these things have been going on. Most of us have common sense in relation to the way that we deal with them." He said he was "simply saying that in the course of the last few months some very heated and intemperate things have happened and have been said".