A Convenient Release

The Department of Education has just given us a master-class in undercutting the opposition, with its announcement on the appointment of 200 foreign language teachers:

he Department of Education has announced that 200 extra language support teachers are to be appointed in the coming weeks.

The new posts will mainly be for primary schools and will go to the schools with the highest number of foreign national children.

The new posts are part of the 550 extra language teachers promised under the social partnership agreement, Towards 2016.

As the quote states, this provision is part of a previous Government committment (the details of which I’m not familiar with), but isn’t it some coincidence that they’d decide to announce it within hours of Fine Gael’s education plans regarding non-national students?

So how does this look to the average viewers? My guess would be that they’ll consider Fine Gael to be making promises and Fianna Fail to be doing something about it (which is, of course, unfair but a conclusion that’s sure to be arrived at by some).

And while Fine Gael’s plans are far more comprehensive than adding more teachers to the employee list, you can bet nearly no-one will give it half as much notice as they would have without that counter-release from the DoE.