Brendan Ryan (Labour)

Like everybody else, I am mystified by what is happening in the Marino Institute of Education. The Government should not take the easier route and say it is a matter for the college. We cannot have the sort of chaos which has descended.

The ESRI report meshes with some of the particularly eccentric comments made yesterday regarding benchmarking. The last benchmarking report had no background information because IBEC insisted that every scrap of information it submitted about private sector salaries should be destroyed so that it would not become accessible. That is why there was no back-up report. There were only conclusions without any back-up because the employers' group, in particular, was very insistent that any information it had supplied never became public. Let us have another benchmarking review and let the entire basis for its conclusions be made public, rather than having a report without background information. We know the result, namely, salaries in different areas will fluctuate, more or less in harmony but a little out of phase.

I agree with what has been said about the website, www.ratemyteacher.com, although I looked at it and any teachers I know were rated highly. However, that is not the point. The most important thing teachers want from us as politicians is to ensure they are properly paid. Therefore, if another benchmarking award is made, some political parties should not decide to jump on a bandwagon and suggest it should not be paid. That is how one devalues teachers.