Sir, - Senator Joe O'Toole is bringing the bucket to the well once again on behalf of primary school teachers - not, it would seem, on the grounds that his members are underpaid or overworked, but because the coffers of the Government are overflowing and he believes that the teachers should have a greater share of that wealth.
It is not so many years ago that the Government was borrowing massively to meet the public-sector wage bill - a strategy that was both decent and enlightened, since the public sector, especially the teachers, did much to make possible the growth in the economy when the recession came to an end. But Senator O'Toole should acknowledge that his members suffered no real hardship during the cruel years of the recession, should acknowledge also that the money borrowed then to meet their salaries must now be repaid.
Some people did have to bear the brunt of the recession; and those who bore it most were the families living on local authority estates: Unemployment rates of over 80 per cent; welfare rises which never matched the real increase in the cost of living; a drugs epidemic that filled the jails, the methadone clinics and the graveyards; parents who despaired of the hope that an Irish government would ever treat their children as anything other than an untermenschen.
Economic recovery, even economic recovery on a gargantuan scale, did little or nothing for the genuinely poor. The means-tested weekly payment for their dependent children was frozen by the last Government and now stands at £13.50 per child - an amount of money that says all that needs to be said about the commitment of Government to deal with poverty.
Teachers who work in the disadvantaged communities know these things only too well. It would be wrong to ascribe to such teachers the philosophy being promoted by their general secretary, knowing as they do how few of their pupils will ever reach the teacher training colleges, the universities, the well-paid jobs that demand academic certification, or beyond the interview stage for the more handsomely-funded State training courses.
The sad truth is that there is no national organisation to speak on behalf of the poor, apart from CORI, which does have the courage to speak out on welfare issues. Nor will those who live in poverty find a single champion in Dail Eireann.
The only thing to be expected from that quarter is an increase, year after year, in the poverty industry, an industry which has demonstrated that its major function is to institutionalise poverty and its attendant miseries. Poverty will not be alleviated, much less cured, by tendentious reports, esoteric schemes, or the importation of social workers, however well-meaning they be. But a beginning could be made if government - of whatever shade - could be convinced that "the destruction of the poor is their poverty" and take steps to eliminate that poverty in the only way that it can be eliminated: by giving the poor enough money to live a reasonably civilised life. Which does not include sailing down the Shannon in a cabin cruiser. There are limits.
Senator O'Toole may well succeed in his ambition to occupy a senior position in the hierarchy of the Irish trade union movement; he is well qualified for the job. And when he eventually reaches the top of the heap he might consider giving the Irish Congress of Trade Unions a suitable motto: "Divil take the hindmost", perhaps? - Yours, etc.
(on behalf of the editorial board of the Ballymun News),
Peadar Kelly, Editor,
Sillogue, Road,
Ballymun,
Dublin 11.