Nama means less money for education, argues BRIAN MOONEY

If the Government invests billions in Nama, will there be anything left to boost spending on education for the thousands who need upskilling and retraining?

The choice is clear: do we invest in education and strengthen our capacity to compete for high-quality employment opportunities, or do we bail out our financial institutions? We don’t have the resources, it seems, to do both.

The Government, of course, will have to service the money borrowed to pay Nama loans; it will therefore have to severely cut back on the money invested in our education system. We are already seeing the shape of the cutbacks in the post-Nama world.

The Department of Finance has proposed a 22 per cent cut in investment in primary schools, and massive curtailment in the services to the most vulnerable children in our primary and second-level schools. This is the price we as a society are being asked to pay to rescue the shareholder value in our banks.

We have more than 100,000 young people under 25 on the unemployment register, many with low skills, having left school without a Leaving Certificate during the boom years.

We have hundreds of thousands who entered the labour force in the 1980s and 1990s who are now unemployed and will not secure employment unless they receive comprehensive upskilling through our adult education system. Many of these 4000,000-plus jobless will drift into long-term unemployment, remaining dependent on the State through social welfare for the rest of their lives, entailing a massive financial burden on the taxpayer.

Alternatively, the Government can decide over the coming weeks to divert the Nama funds into the education and training of those currently without the skills to secure employment.

There are currently two applicants for every post-Leaving Cert place available in Irish colleges.

If half of these current PLC applicants end up lying at home in bed, losing hope and drifting into despair and anger, can you imagine the cost our society will pay in the long term? We don’t have the traditional option, as previous generations had, of the emigrant boat to rid ourselves of our surplus unemployed.

Irish society will have to live for a long time with the consequences of our Government’s decision on this issue.

In my view, it’s far better to invest whatever resources we can now muster in education and training services, to develop the skills and talents of those who will create the wealth of our society into the future. This growing wealth will enable us to care for those who have been impoverished by the collapse in equity values.

To limit educational and training opportunities now, in order to rescue bank shareholders and subordinate bondholders, is to court social and economic disaster.

Brian Mooney, a teacher at Oatlands College, Stillorgan, Dublin, is a former president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors