Mr. John Boyle:

The darkest time for me as a trade unionist on this side of the Border was when we lost our economic sovereignty and all the pain that followed from that. As an educationalist at the time, I remember particularly one budget where there was a dirty dozen of cuts to the education system. I was obviously hoping that I would never see this again and that it was a once-off. Thankfully, much of the damage that happened at that time has been repaired since. Not all of it has been, but much of it. Unfortunately, we are experiencing the exact same with the education system in the North. We learned on this side of the Border, politically, that when we had other crises in recent years, we went at it with a better and fairer approach. We are not seeing that now. There is no doubt that part of that is due to the Barnett formula and the fact that there is so much neglect from London of the Six Counties of Ireland. That is impacting not only on the workers but on the public at large who the workers are trying to serve.

Some of the cuts that have been earmarked and driven through for education are even worse in the North than what we experienced in the South at the time. There are many vulnerable communities in Northern Ireland. There is much deprivation and disadvantage. There are many children with special educational needs, just as there would be here, who are really suffering from that. Mr. Gerry Murphy spoke about that ICTU paper and funding needing to be on a needs basis. One of the big clouds over funding in Northern Ireland at the moment is that a huge deficit has built up over the years due to the neglect. Our concern as a trade union movement is that if an assembly is to be up and functioning, it needs to get the funding to not only overcome the debt, but that if all the funding that becomes available has to go to settle debt, then the public services will not advance and the citizens will suffer.

Could workers in Northern Ireland who are experiencing this in teaching be blamed? It has been like a 20-year pay freeze. As people know, in the agrifood sector or anywhere else, the price of ordinary commodities is going up all the time. Could people be blamed for seeking employment elsewhere? That is not what we are about as a trade union movement. We are the biggest all-island collective gathering of workers. We want to make sure that, wherever people live on this island, they will have quality living and will be able to benefit from the best public services.

I sincerely hope that if the assembly is moving towards going back to work, with all of the stakeholders, whether from the USA, the UK or Ireland, that there is a decent funding stream to make sure that Northern Ireland can move forward.