Would you let this man be in charge of your child's education?

I’ve had a few days to calm myself down about the budget so I could write coherently about the mess that we’ve been put into.  Everyone is incredibly angry and rightly so; in fact, just looking at the picture on the left fills me with rage.  The man on the left is responsible for the education of every person in this country.  I thought Mary Hanafin was terrible…well she was, but this guy is the most useless politician I’ve ever seen.  He didn’t even have the brains to invent some originailty in his budget cuts.  Instead he decided to look back a few years ago when the government spent even less money on education and thought to himself…”hmmm, I’ll simply copy those ideas.”
So now we’re back to having a maximum of two language support teachers which won’t affect small schools but bigger schools will now have to use their General Allocation hours.  That means will children who were struggling have their hours cut for the greater good?
Now we will feel guilty for being sick.  Being a teacher means being with large (even larger now) groups of children.  Children spend their time diseased and, as teachers, we are very likely to pick one or two of these minor ailments up.  These colds, snuffles, sniffles, man-flus (or whatever you want to call them) last about a day or two if the teacher gets a bit of rest.  Now, in order not to let our children suffer, we will either have to come in and make ourselves sicker or go to a doctor (€60 down the drain) to get a piece of paper and a bit of rest in order for a sub to come in.  Never mind the inconvenioence for principals and unemployed qualified teachers who got some sub days.
And there’s more… resource teachers will no longer be able to buy equipment because the government have pulled the plug on funding there.  So when little Johnny goes out for a bit of support, he shall have to go to an empty room because all the concrete materials he needs (stile boards, dice, board games, etc.) can’t be got.
Then the crushing blow…. the pupil-teacher ratio.  So that’s 400 teachers gone next year. And that’s another table to fit into already small rooms.
So what should we do?
I’m not sure.  There’s no point writing to TDs because they don’t care.  There’s no point striking because children will suffer and there won’t be much support.  There’s also the problem of apathy.  It looks like we just have to keep going.  Things were rubbish anyway with no ICT support since 2000, no innovation since 2000 and an absolute shambles of a curriculum since 2000.
I guess it’s teachers that will have to be innovative.  We have to accept that the results of this budget won’t be seen for another 10 years or more.  It’s not like in Health where people die.  I just don’t know what we can do.  Batt O’Keefe has proved himself to be entirely worthless.  I really hated Mary Hanafin and I didn’t think we’d get someone worse – someone who evidently has no interest whatsoever in children’s welfare, teachers’ welfare or anything related to education at all.  The budget, for me, is the last straw. Shame on him.