Sir - One of the main reasons that the ASTI left the Irish Congress of Trade Unions was because of the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness. The PPF agreement was based on the assumption that we in Ireland would have an inflation rate of around 3 per cent a year. That was the fundamental point underpinning the whole agreement. Now, with the "official" rate of inflation at around 7 per cent, it is quite obvious that this agreement no longer holds; indeed, if the price of housing and services were factored into the consumer price index the real inflation rate would be somewhere around 15 per cent.
On a recent Today FM radio programme, Senator Shane Ross said: "The trade unions were taken for a ride in the PPF." In fact the trade union leaders have unwittingly negotiated a real decrease in pay for their members. No wonder IBEC and the Government want to stick to the terms of the agreement. The PPF is dead. It delivered nothing in real terms to workers and the quicker it is buried the better for everybody.
We in the ASTI had to take the action we took on our own because we saw the Irish educational system being dismantled before our eyes. We are now shouting "Stop" to this Government, if it wants to preserve what is regarded as one of the best education systems in the world. The danger is, it may be too late.
To quote Clair O'Connor, chief executive of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland on the reasons why US financial institutions come to the IFSC: "Its availability of skilled labour, the lifestyle and the quality of the educational system, both for the people they want to hire and for their own children." That is the view of an outsider.
There is something fundamentally wrong in this country at the moment, when gardai, nurses and now teachers have to take industrial action to get their fair share of the wealth that this Celtic Tiger has produced. At the recent Eircom a.g.m., shareholders heard how the remuneration committee granted a bonus of around £1 million to the managing director because of the successful flotation of the company. I will not even mention what the recent tribunals have uncovered. What message is all of this sending out to the ordinary, hardworking PAYE teacher - and indeed other workers? - Yours, etc.,
Pat Cahill, B.A., H.DipEd., B.L., Standing Committee, Region 13, ASTI, Terenure, Dublin 12.