Gilmore: Schools will suffer under proposed FG cuts
Labour has said that Fine Gael’s proposals to slash 30,000 jobs in the public service will have a devastating effect on frontline services.
The party today launched plans aimed at improving Ireland’s literacy rates.
It cites a 2009 OECD report - finding one in six Irish 15-year-olds has inadequate literacy skills to cope with the demands of the workplace.
Labour leader Eamon Gilmore says Fine Gael’s planned cuts will hit schools.
"The cuts that Fine Gael are proposing - the 30,000 reduction in the numbers of people who are employed by the public service - will impact on schools.
"It will mean taking teachers and special needs assistants out of schools, and the people who will lose as a result of that are children who will not get the support they need."
Mr Gilmore also said he will not be changing his tactics at next week’s leadership debate.
The Labour leader said it was a mixed verdict by pundits as to who came out on top of last night’s head to head with Fianna Fail leader Micheál Martin.
Asked by reporters on the campaign trail in Meath if he was surprised that Mr Martin was so aggressive, he said he wasn’t, because that’s what people do when they have nothing to say.
He said the voters will decide on the issues.
"Nobody is going to go into a polling station on the 25th, bite on the end of their pencil and wonder whose debating tactics were the best," he said.
"What they are going to do, is they are going to go in and (ask) which which party has the best proposals to get people back to work, to deal with the problems of the country and to solve the mess that Fianna Fáil has created for it."
