'When your day is disrupted as we strike, please trust that we take to the streets for your children as much as ourselves'

“Five years. Five years of ticking boxes, working through tough emotions and tougher days, two and a half years waiting on assessment and diagnosis, a further two and a half years gathering evidence, ticking boxes and banging doors until finally there is a statutory assessment. This is the real-life story of someone I know very well, someone I love dearly who has inspired so much of what I do,” states teacher, SENCO and INTO representative Gemma Brolly.

A primary school teacher for many years and a SENCO in St. Brigid’s Primary School/Bunscoil Naomh Bríd, Múinteoir Gemma was speaking ahead of this morning's strike action.

She continued: “Unfortunately, this story could belong to any one of hundreds of young people, and don’t even start me on the impact this can have on mental health. Mental health which was provided for so well in the first two years of Covid and then whipped away leaving so many with nothing and their parents, teachers and assistants doing all they can to fill the gap, scrambling and waiting on ever-growing waiting lists, usually accessing support outside the education sector or privately. This is the system we continue to wrestle with on a daily basis, the system we strike to save.”

An Irish medium teacher, Múinteoir Gemma continues: “What we are seeing in issues accessing teachers (as many now emigrate within their first few years of qualifying), we are seeing ten-fold in Irish medium. There is a géarchéim, an emergency in Irish medium education which desperately needs attention. Irish language organisations, community organisations are doing what they can to assist in these matters but once again, they are doing what we pay the government to do.”

Ms. Brolly continued: “The majority of school staff are there because they genuinely care, the worries and struggles of the children they teach are their worries, however the powers that be are all too aware of this. Aware that as long as we keep our school children at the heart of our work and decisions as we should (while others prioritise money) they have us right where they want us, exploiting our vocational hearts while they pay us wages that no longer stretch to pay our bills or provide for our families.

“As a South Derry INTO representative, I know there are so many who have taken on a second job. I have heard of so many struggling, some even struggling to find the funds to travel to the last rally, but yet in their view they truly, they could not afford not to strike. I watch young people I have taught who would make fantastic teachers and yet to tell those young people to enter teaching in this country at this time almost feels wrong. How can we build a future with truly caring and dedicated professionals when they would be better paid working for the concrete company down the road and no student loan to boot?

“So when your day is disrupted as we strike, please trust that we take to the streets for your children as much as ourselves, so that they may have the support and the education they deserve, so that they will be paid a fair wage in parity with all other regions, a wage they can truly live on and so that they, and their children will have an appropriately funded education system which educates, nurtures and cares for every child as it should.”