O'Leary doubles down on teachers in the Dáil comments

Michael O'Leary has doubled down on his comments made about teachers at Minister Peter Burke's campaign launch in Mullingar on Saturday night.

Speaking on NewsTalk this morning, Mr O''Leary said that "the number of teachers in the Dáil...is a serious issue".

"We do need better diversity and better representation of business people who can deliver, who I think are trained to make decisions and deliver things.

"...If there's been a pile-on subsequently by the teachers' union and the Sinn Féin and all the left-wing tree-huggers, then I must have said something right. I think what I said was perfectly correct.

I love teachers. I think teachers do a great job. But I think there's too many teachers in the Dáil..."

"...Why can't we get more business people to go into the Dáil, more computer engineers, more engineers? I think one of the challenges this country faces is we have this archaic system where we needed a TD for every 30,000 people. We're now about to add another 14 TDs to the Dáil.

"When the population goes to six million in the next decade or 7 million by 2050, we could have 300, 400 TDs in the Dáil. Why don't we change the constitution? Let's have one TD for every 60,000 people in the age of social media and better communication. We would halve the number of TDs in the Dáil.

"By the way, I would halve the number of TDs in the Dáil, but double their pay. I think TDs should be paid twice what they're paid today, but there should be only half the number of TDs. And then I think you would encourage more talent, more people, more business people, more engineers, more computer scientists.

"I just wish they would spend more time in the schools and less time in the Dáil. And I would give you the example of Catherine Martin and Roderick O'Gorman, as two ex-teachers who are now in the Dáil, who have been full-time ministers for the last five years, who have clearly failed."