Personnally I think he is being a bit cheeky having a rant on the "working class" like this, given that fact that it is often the well-educated university types who got us into the financial mess the nation is in, via leading the banks or the incomptent regualtors.
I would partially agree with his comments on education though. There is a mob of feral children out there in every town in Ireland, running out of control because their parents don't give a monkey about their future and see no future beyond the next social welfare payments. Why work when the state provides?
I'm not sure the issue though is the parents attitude to education, I think it is more to do with their attitide to work. I came from a small farming background, my Dad held a full time job as well. He worked 12-14 hours a day, every day of his working life and yet was also heavily involved in the community. That attitude rubs off on kids in the right way, in the same way as the attitude of many of our professional social welfare claimants rubs off on theirs. Never ceases to amaze me that there was over 100000 people on the dole during the boom years, yet all the Eastern Europeans could come over and get jobs easily. Why wouldn't the unemployed Irish take those jobs when they could have if they wanted to?