America isn’t the only place teachers’ unions have basically destroyed the public school system. In credit crunch hit Ireland students are being told to bring their own toilet paper to school like Ireland is some third world nation:

Pupils at a St John’s girls’ national school, in Carrigaline, in the southern county of Cork, were asked to bring their own supplies in one of the starkest examples yet of the death of Ireland’s “Celtic Tiger” economy.

Catherine O’Neill, the school’s principal, said, in a letter to parents: “From time to time we will request your daughter to bring in a toilet roll to her class teacher. These rolls will be specifically for your daughter’s class and will be dispensed by the class teacher.”

She said the measure had been taken in order to save money in the face of education funding cuts.

“We are endeavouring to trim down expenses and ensure we use our grants towards [educational needs],” she wrote.

Irish parents are already struggling to buy schoolbooks and uniforms in the face of a deep recession.

Those “educational grants” go mainly to overpaid teachers whose starting pay (calculated into dollars) is $47,855 and goes up every year, being capped at $93,012 a year for a 25-year veteran. But that’s just basic rates. The Teachers’ Union of Ireland has negotiated pay scales for paraprofessionals that would make anyone who has ever taught a community college or adult education class green with envy. A “Youthreach” coordinator begins at around $56275.69 and an “Adult Education Officer” starts at $77,155! Here’s a handy pay scale guide that shows all the perks teachers get.

What you won’t find on the site of Ireland’s “progressive, professional teachers’ union, representing teachers and lecturers in Vocational Schools, Community Colleges, Community & Comprehensive Schools, Institutes of Technology, Further Education and other specialist areas,” is an acknowledgment that the economy would make it hard for the community to support their lavish pay deals. Now we have a school were  parents are being told to send in toilet paper which the whole class will be using while the teacher who will be “dispensing” the paper is likely one of the wealthiest people those pupils know.

The teachers are really the Marie Antoinette of the modern world aren’t they?

h/t Drudge