Gaffe-prone ministers need lessons on the wisdom of dialogue

THE Calamity Sisters in the Department of Education must have been absent from class on the day teacher warned about the twin dangers of overpromising on the one hand, and saying the wrong thing, at the wrong time, on the other. On December 30, Education Minister Norma Foley, right, and Inclusion Minister Josepha Madigan, left, announced all schools would reopen on January 11.

On the same day, health officials confirmed 1,718 new cases of Covid amid an air of foreboding bordering on panic that things were going from bad to worse.

Within a week Foley and Madigan had shifted position – now only Leaving Cert students would return to school for three days a week and pupils with special needs would also go back to class.

It didn’t take long for the Leaving Cert idea to be dropped in the teeth of opposition from teachers and principals who, obviously, had not been consulted properly beforehand.

Then, finally and unsurprisingly, the ministers’ insistence that children with special needs, their teachers and assistants, would return to school last Thursday was dropped on Tuesday night – again because of failure to persuade the unions.

On a day when 93 people lost their lives to Covid-19 and 1,996 new cases were confirmed, it’s hard to expect teachers and assistants to have had any other view of the ministers’ proposal.

Norma and Josepha need to dial down on promises they are not in a position to deliver. And both would be well advised also to engage their brains before opening their mouths.

Ms Foley calling

INTO chief John Boyle ‘incredibly disingenuous’ is hardly a friendly arm around the shoulder.

As for Ms Madigan, we can only speculate what she was thinking when she placed the teachers’ refusal to return to special needs classes this week in the same context as the abuse that took place in Mother and Baby Homes. A few days earlier she referred to children without special needs as ‘normal’.

C’mon. Smarten up.