The secondary teachers' union, the ASTI, has criticised yesterday's Gay Byrne Show for a "scurrilous" and "unwarranted" attack on teachers. Gay Byrne read out an anonymous letter from a woman living next door to a teacher who complained about her moving about the house while on sick leave.
"Reading such a letter offers credibility to complaints which cannot be verified in any circumstance and which, in anonymous form, would normally go directly into most people's rubbish basket," said the ASTI general secretary, Mr Charlie Lennon.