Workers Solidarity Movement

After a month of fooling around, the government has finally declared that they will implement water charges for schools, backdating them to 2007. These charges come as a serious blow to Irish schools, which are already among the worst funded in the OECD. In many schools, funding does not cover basic requirements such as computers or gym equipment, forcing them to fundraise among parents of students.

The Greens have the cheek to try and pass this off as an environmental tax, to encourage less water usage, but this is total nonsense. It’s private companies who will be implementing the metering and charging, meaning that the tax will actually be about governments subsidising their friends in the private sector, rather than schools.The government would like to hold their hands up and declare that they have no choice, but it’s them who signed up to the privatisation agenda that they are now implementing. Teachers and parents of students should not stand for this, motions are already being prepared for the INTO’s conference to refuse to pay these charges, we should all support this stance against the government’s attack on education.

This article is from Workers Solidarity 101 published Jan/Feb 2008

Draft PDF of WS101 - articles will differ from proofread version