One of the more onerous duties allotted to the incumbent of the Education portfolio in Government is to address the various teaching union conferences that take place at this time of the year.
Given the cuts the education sector has had to cope with in the austerity period, there has been a heightened sense of running the gauntlet about these occasions for recent Ministers of the day, and Jan O’Sullivan will have had the “trial by ordeal” experience accentuated for her this week by the still live Junior Certificate …