The 20,000 students on post-Leaving Certificate courses were disappointed at the absence of any Budget announcement on the PLC maintenance grants promised to them in Fianna Fail's election manifesto.
The Union of Students in Ireland said it would be asking the Minister for Education to clarify immediately whether funding would be provided for PLC students to obtain grants for the 1998-99 academic year.
Mr Malcolm Byrne, USI education officer, said this did not look likely, given that there had been no money made available for PLC grants either in the Estimates or the Budget.
Ms Alice Prendergast, Teachers Union of Ireland president, said: "There was an explicit commitment in the 1997 Fianna Fail manifesto to pay these grants in the same way as for all other third-level students.
"The Minister also came as opposition spokesperson to our congress in 1997 and promised PLC grants. It is understandable that students, teachers and parents would have a deep sense of disappointment at the Minister's failure to deliver on this issue."
She called on Mr Martin "to make a statement without delay to clarify his intentions with regard to the PLC sector".
There was relatively little in the Budget for education after the recent largesse of the Education Technology Investment Fund and information technology in the schools' programme.
The near doubling of the Adult Literacy and Community Education budget to over £4 million, as demanded by the AONTAS and the National Adult Literacy Agency before the election, was the main item.
The acting director of the National Adult Literacy Agency, Ms Inez Bailey, said she was "very happy that we are to get the £2 million increase".
She expressed appreciation for the efforts of the Minister in charge of adult education, Mr Willie O'Dea, and for his statement that this was "just a first step in the full resourcing of the adult literacy service".
Ms Bailey hoped it would mean that VECs would be "in a position to augment their adult literacy service and to employ full-time appropriately paid organisers".
There was also a £500,000 allocation for primary schools to buy school books.
The chairman of the National Parents Council (Primary), Mr Brian Foy, said the Budget would be "disastrous" for primary education. The opportunity to help lower-income families to escape from the poverty trap had been ignored, while those on annual salaries of £50,000 "have another £1,100 per year to spend on `grinds' so that the gap between their children and the children of deprived parents widens even further."