Carlow election candidate calls on Fine Gael to stand up for teachers after O’ Leary comments

Labour Party candidate for Carlow/Kilkenny and former school principal Seán Ó hArgáin has called on local Fine Gael candidates to condemn comments by Michael O’ Leary at a Fine Gael election launch for their colleague, Enterprise Minister Peter Burke.

Speaking at the national launch of the Labour Party’s General Election Campaign, Cllr Ó hArgáin said Mr O’ Leary had gratuitously insulted the role of teachers.

"We all know that Michael O’ Leary has form in attacking public servants. His behaviour on Saturday night, however, steps over his previous lines," he said.

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"As a former principal and as a currently registered teacher, I can tell Michael that teachers have been making do with the crumbs from the Government table for years. We have always ‘made and do’ with the lowest investment in education at all levels in Europe. I have never heard Michael O’ Leary call for increased investment in the public education system, despite the fact that it is Irish schools and teachers who have provided him with his staff over a generation.~

"His dismissal of teachers’ ability to ‘get things done’ is a gratuitous insult to members of a profession I am proud to be a fifth generation member of. Just because teachers are driven by the best of public service motives, rather than by Thatcherite for-profit motives only, makes them admired throughout the developed world. The old-fashioned pitting of the private versus the public sector damages our society and the necessary cohesion and solidarity we need.

"Of course, Mr O’ Leary is happy to pocket the airfares of our young teaching graduates who are emigrating because of the disfunction and abandonment that Fine Gael  and Fianna Fáil have brought them over the past decade. Our young teachers have seen their hopes of owning a home or even meeting the basic costs of living robbed from them by the two parties’ obsession with letting the market sort out all our problems.

Cllr Ó hArgáin said it was the reaction of the Fine Gael backers in the room in Clarke’s Bar that is most concerning.

"I call on our local Fine Gael candidates to clearly distance themselves from O’ Leary’s offensive rantings and on Minster Burke and Taoiseach Harris to apologise for the gross insult it involved," he said.

"Meanwhile, I will be proud to offer myself as a candidate and as a teacher, to follow in the footsteps of superb teachers who have represented every party in Dáil Éireann and have been superb public representatives as well as public servants."