The Higher Education Authority (HEA) demanded that, this year, all Higher Education institutes cut employment to 3 per cent below 2008 levels. The ban has affected the academic quality, as well as administrative efficiency, of colleges throughout the country.

USI President, Peter Mannion, said:
“These cuts are devastating students’ experiences at college. Given the fact that some of these staffing cutbacks are in the student services sector, our members feel the affects acutely.”

Mike Jennings, IFUT’s General Secretary, said:
“The Irish Federation of University Teachers shares completely the frustration expressed by USI: in colleges up and down the country IFUT members can see all too plainly the damage that is already being done to the very fabric of our Higher Education system. The Minister for Education, I am sad to say, does not even know the damage he is doing.

“My members are finding it doubly hard to cope. Not only are they vilified daily in the media as overpaid public servants while struggling to provide an education to students with vastly limited resources, but, to add insult to injury, the man who is supposed to be their political champion demonstrates almost daily his cluelessness of what is happening in his name on the ground.”

The Press Release issued jointly by IFUT and USI is available in full here.

He criticised the “crocodile tears of current Education Minister, Batt O’Keefe, who bemoans the low level of third-level participation, while at the same time pursuing an increase in teacher-pupil ratios at first- and second-level, making access to third-level all the more difficult, especially for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

Mr Jennings condemned the current chronic under-funding of Irish universities. “It would represent dangerous naïvety on their part if the Heads of our Universities were to believe that a return of third-level fees would mean anything other than the Government using it as an opportunity to reduce State funding to the sector still further.”

The IFUT Press Release is available here.