Thousands of teachers descended on the Taoiseach’s constituency over the weekend to deliver an angry message to Brian Cowen over Budget cutbacks in education.

Up to 4,000 primary and secondary school teachers and parents stormed O’Connor Square in Tullamore, Co Offaly, roaring slogans to show their anger at Fianna Fail.

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President of the Irish National Learners Alliance (INLA), Constantine Dalrymple, told the Irish Sentinel just how opposed teachers are to the measures introduced in the new budget. “Obviously class size is a huge issue in terms of education. From Ireland to China to Timbuktu is well known that the smaller the class size the less work the teacher has to do.

If I have 25 students it means I have 25 exams or homework assignments to correct. But if I have 30 this means it’s going to take much more time and therefore it obviously has a massive impact on how much free time I have. It’s about time somebody thought of the teachers here instead of always bleating on and on about how it’s going to affect the kids. Realistically it makes no difference to them if there’s 20 or 30 in a class, they get little or no individual attention anyway so what’s everyone going on about?”

Secondary school Maths teacher, Arthur Plug from Terenure College in Dublin agrees. “More kids simply equals more work for me. We’re the ones that are suffering, not them. I’m finding it more and more difficult to spend time on the important things in life like grooming underage girls in chatrooms. Unless they reduce the class sizes then I don’t see any way forward beyond an all out strike and when parents have their kids at home all day every day then maybe they’ll realise what a complete pain in the tits they are. ‘The children are our future’ they say. That’s all well and good but children are annoying little bastards”.

Minister for Education Batt O’Keefe is warning that nothing is going to change though. “If teachers didn’t realise that children were a pain in the bishop’s gooch before they got into that line of business then that’s tough luck. They can always go work on B&I ferry between North Wall and Liverpool if they don’t like it”.

Further protests are planned for this week with hundreds of PE teachers set to streak across the pitch when Ireland play Poland at Croke Park this Wednesday. A spokesperson for the INLA said hopefully the threat of leathery balls and flaps would make the government come to its senses.