Deficient teachers are seldom fired in Ireland's education system, former Attorney General Peter Sutherland claimed today.
In an astonishing attack, the ex-European Commissioner said that deficient teachers are currently "protected for life" and blamed unions for the lack of independent assessment.
"In relation to teaching at second level, there is a serious problem. Only a handful of non-performing teachers have been fired in the past ten years in Ireland," said the chairman of BP and Goldman Sachs International.
Interviewed in a new book, 'Ireland's Economic Success', Mr Sutherland (61) added: "Teachers should be admired and properly paid but they should also be measured in performance and those who are seriously deficient cannot be protected for life. They are at the moment. Our education system is simply not good enough in terms of assessment of teachers' capacities and abilities. I think the trade unions are largely responsible for this."
The UCD graduate continued: "Everybody agrees that teachers should be the most honoured and, relatively speaking, a highly-paid profession. Yet there are few people I know who do not have a genuinely serious complaint about some teachers' capacity in schools for their children.
"I think that if there was one single reform for the Irish economic system it would be to get teaching right, because I really think it truly needs objective testing with appropriate responses then taken."
Mr Sutherland said that recent reports into third level education in Ireland showed the country was below the European average percentage of graduates who are in fourth-level study in science and engineering.
"If we are to maintain our successful momentum, we have to have a competitive advantage somewhere. We do not have it in terms of costs any more, nor in terms of indigenous natural wealth, so we have to develop it through skills and brainpower. I don't think we have achieved that."
He said young Irish people are attractive to firms, not necessarily because of the Irish education system, but because they are hard workers and natural communicators.
Mr Sutherland also said only one Irish university - Trinity College - regularly featured in the top 200 in the world.
He further claimed that most science teachers at second level were from biology backgrounds rather than physics or chemistry.
Turning his attention to other areas, Mr Sutherland said the ESB represented a classic failure to introduce competition.
"State enterprises in Ireland had to be dragged kicking and screaming to any degree of competition.
"The result of the lack of competition probably affects the cost of electricity which is too high and it has also led to some allegedly scandalous situations involving people being paid for doing little or nothing," he claimed.