Sir, - We are writing regarding the recent threat by the ASTI to resume industrial action, and to focus this action on disruption of the upcoming State exams. As Leaving Certificate students, we depend on our teachers to provide our education and to prepare us for an examination that will determine the rest of our lives.
We do not resent our teachers for their action one which they clearly feel is necessary. We recognise it is their legal, and moral right to express dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs in their profession. As students, we are in no position to judge the merits of their case, nor do we wish to. The finer details of the matter are the concern of the ASTI and the Government, not of the students, and we are entirely neutral in this regard.
However, we do feel great resentment at the ASTI's premeditated targeting of exam classes in order to inflict maximum damage and thus to force the Government to accede to their demands. It is ironic to note that the ASTI dispute has deliberately targeted a vulnerable section of society, while other disputes (e.g. the nurses') make special provisions to minimise disruption and inconvenience to such groups.
Perhaps they are beginning to feel a sense of desperation. Perhaps they now see that strike action could never be used as effective leverage against an employer who saves millions every strike day. Perhaps this truly is the only course of action left, in the hope that anxious parents will pressurise the Government to end the dispute quickly. But we are not anonymous people who can be used as weapons. What the ASTI bureaucrats need to realise is that they are punishing us for their grievance with the Government. It is nothing to do with us, yet we have been cruelly let down.
Whatever the motivation for this drastic strategy, the end result is that they done little but inspire in us a profound sense of disbelief and disappointment. - Yours, etc.
Maeve Ryan, (letter co-signed by 71 fellow students of Cork city schools), Robin Hill, Magazine Road, Cork.