The annual ASTI Easter strike threat

Darc19 wrote: »

Typical tabloid muck that hopes no-one will question anything - but maybe you took it from others and because it suits your agenda, you didn't question anything yourself - so lets correct your statements

1 - Very Important for a dail to sit to debate legislation. Yes it costs €25,000 (zero rent) but much of that €25k would also have been spent in Leinster house. Whoops - did you not know that?

2 - ONE junior minister got a pay rise of 16k as it was an additional junior minister and ensured they were paid the same amount as the others. The optics were not great and the rag tabloids did not report it correctly, but that's not surprising. And then some people believe everything tabloids because they won't check for themselves.

3 - Printer. Yes this was a cock-up by an OPW staff member. Human error. However the additional cost was not €1m it was €314,453. 70% LESS than your BS number

4 - E Voting. Nothing wrong with it whatsoever. But the journalists & media suddenly saw that the 3-5 days of reporting on elections and count centres with the relevant expenses and advertising income would be wiped out as these machines would give accurate results in minutes went on a campaign against them. These machines were not connected to internet. they were all secure standalone machines. They simply could not be hacked. But the media who are not exactly a trustworthy source were having none of it and started the campaign against the machines

5 - Children's Hospital. "Billions" over budget. Total cost will be about 2BN. So for your wild exaggeration to be true would mean it was originally to be built for zero. (I sincerely hope you are not a teacher with this type of BS exaggeration - though it very much in the style of ASTI propaganda)


6 - Legal teams on a retainer. I actually agree with this. Too many people look for compo compo compo. "It's always someone else's fault" it the mantra. So it is prudent for the government to keep updated files where a claim may come in the future. Error was in not keeping the files fully secure.

7. Tribunals. I'll give you that one. Mostly a waste of money because people want "retribution" rather than closing the loopholes, introduce severe penalties and move on.

8 - More tabloid BS. Cork is the second city and all projects went though the same process as others. If anything it has not received the favouritism that other counties got when they had relevant ministers. But there are some who believe every word of a leftist tabloid without checking very basic facts

9 - The old Bank Bailout chestnut. It was a "Banking" bailout. The banks themselves certainly did not get a bailout - it was joe soap the regular person who had their savings in the banks who was bailed out as their saving were protected. Without the banking bailout ASTI would have lost millions as their deposits would have been wiped out. Banks (except those which closed) have mostly repaid the money along with punitive interest and levies. Bank of Ireland have repaid in full. AIB still have a bit to go. The cost will be circa €30bn - almost entirely Anglo & Irish Nationwide. - As for bondholders, they should not be burnt as they are a holy grail for international lending. Iceland burnt bondholders - they ended up paying for that error in higher bond rates for the last 12 years. Ireland has saved BILLIONS from refinancing bonds at zero and negative rates.


Your BS post is exactly why the ASTI are despised by people - full of exaggeration and hype. It why more and more teachers are leaving the ASTI as they simply are sick of the BS spouted by second rate leadership day in day out with a large cohort of retired teachers pulling the strings