10-07-2025
‘We're low hanging fruit': Adult educators protest potential layoffs amid budget restraints in sector
'Adult educators are being told that they have no jobs to go to in September. It's happening across the country. There are possibly hundreds of workers affected. They're hardworking, dedicated teachers,' James O'Keefe says.
He was speaking outside Leinster House on Wednesday in protest of what he described as the 'scandalous' treatment of workers in
Education and Training Boards
(ETBs) who teach adults re-entering education, many of whom 'would have been failed the first time round by the education system,' Mr O'Keefe says.
He said many teachers in the sector are on precarious fixed-term contracts that they 'had no choice but to take'. Adult educators 'are entitled to a contract of indefinite duration after four years of work', he said, meaning those with less than that now face unemployment after the summer break.
He said teachers with up to three years experience were told via phone call 'they have no jobs to go to in September'.
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'Because they're on fixed-term contracts still, legally, there isn't an issue with this. No employment law has been breached, but where's the justice for these people? It's atrocious,' Mr O'Keefe said.
Adult Education Teachers, who are facing job losses in September, have protested outside Leinster House. Video: Bryan O'Brien
He said widespread underfunding of the sector as the reason for these job cuts, which have been initiated by ETBs across the country.
He attributes blame to Minister for Further and Higher Education James Lawless as 'he's the minister responsible for allocating funding to the funding body Solas', the State agency that oversees further education and training facilities.
'They're panicking all of a sudden, 'how do we make up these gaps in our budgets? Well, they're the low-hanging fruit, let's get rid of them',' he said. 'It's incredibly disrespectful and it's causing so much stress and uncertainty for so many people'.
Mr O'Keeffe says the students they teach are 'often from disadvantaged communities, so they're looking to improve their employment prospects, they're looking to gain access to further and higher education. Often, we're assisting them to navigate their way a bit more easily through, what's often from them, a hostile society'.
Adult education teachers protesting on Wednesday. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien
Finn Mac Aodháin has worked as an adult educator in Co Donegal for three years, delivering modules in literacy, communications, and the Irish language. He said his students are often people 'who have escaped the net, so to speak, or had a very bad experience with education'.
He said many of his students are also refugees arriving from war-torn countries.
'Despite having similar, or actually in many cases the same, qualifications as postsecondary teachers,' Mr Mac Aodháin said his profession is not valued as such, and is often described as 'a non-teaching role' in internal communications in his place of employment.
He does not know if he has a job in September because 'we're laid off during the break periods', he said. 'Of course it's having a mental health toll on me. I have a young family ... All this uncertainty, it's not a great state of affairs at all. It's a pitiful situation'.
