Students and Siptu education Workers march to stop school closure.

The Department of Education withdraws funding from Integrate Ireland Language and Training.

In in protest 500* staff and students at the Integrate Ireland Language and Training Centre (IILT) in Dublin marched from Liberty Hall to the Department of Education offices in Marlboro Street at 1.00 pm on Friday, June 20, 2008. It was also World Refugee Day and the proposed closure truly demonstrates Government policy towards integration, education and workers rights.

Related Links: Siptu

The proposed cuts will result in the loss of direct teaching services to the adult refugee community and support, training, and resourcing to the language support programme in schools, as well as training and web-based support and resources for teachers and tutors of adult ESOL learners. Forty-four highly experienced teaching, research and support staff will lose their jobs with no offer of redeployment resulting in the loss to the sector of skills and expertise built up over the last ten years.

Integrate Ireland Language and Training Centre (IILT) has been providing full time language and integration classes to the adult refugee community in centres around Ireland since 2001. IILT's head office, in the former Veterinary College in Ballsbridge, Dublin, was sold to private developers by the Office of Public Works. The former Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin, announced in 2007 that IILT would be moving to Greendale Comprehensive School, Kilbarrack in 2008. IILT staff were shown the building in February 2008 and were expecting to make the move until last Thursday, when they were told that their jobs were to go.

This was the first demonstration in Dublin and no one was left in any doubt as to the support and solidarity of both teaching staff and students. Leading tarde Unionists from Siptu came out to support as did Ruairí Quinn, former leader of the Labour Party who had endorsed the failed Lisbon Treaty.

This was the first action taken by this group of workers and students. It is a highly unionised workplace and it shows- strong confident and not prepared to take threatened closures without standing up for their and the students human rights. Just maybe the Government have picked on the wrong group of workers.

*Garda figures images (c)