INTO Conference - Analysis: Parent/teacher meetings and the benchmarking issue.
While teachers at the INTO congress are officially stressing the problems of sub-standard school buildings and what they see as inadequate resources for children with special needs, they have another gripe which is not part of a formal motion.
Teachers spend huge amounts of voluntary time in music, sports, community activities and other forms of educational enrichment without pay, nor do they expect it.
The lack of acknowledgment for these efforts by Mr Dempsey is one reason why teachers are so reluctant to bow to the demands of the Minister for Education and Science to schedule parent/teacher meetings in the evenings.
The teachers claim that they have always been flexible in scheduling these meetings.
However, in the words of the INTO general secretary, Mr John Carr, they refuse to travel in the evening to cold, remote or dangerous areas "where people are attacked on a nightly basis" in order to meet parents.
The feeling at congress is that the Minister is siding with Dublin 4 parents in offering evening parent/teacher meetings.
One teacher commented that most of the parents of pupils in her school - it is in a disadvantaged area - work as cleaners in the evening.
"My members are tired of the word vision," Mr Carr said.
"We will be tough, persistent and demanding on behalf of the children of this country . . . a populist and opportunist measure that satisfies Dublin 4 does not have nationwide implications."
Parents who complained that schools were closed on "curriculum-implementation days" were the same parents who took their children out of school and "around the world on two weeks holidays" in June.
"I don't begrudge them their holidays, but let's have consistency in relation to the integrity of the school year," Mr Carr added.
Teachers were also expected to turn "informer" on parents by reporting pupil absences to the Education Welfare Board.
Yet at the same time as teachers were being given more onerous responsibilities, the local garda with honours Irish in the Leaving Certificate - once retired at 50 on a full pension - could walk straight into any school and teach children.
Teachers, meanwhile, were being asked to engage with in- service training outside the school year without being paid overtime.
The president of the INTO, Mr Gerry Malone, said he believed the source of these problems was because the benchmarking body "failed in its remit".
Primary teachers had wanted to reduce the length of the salary scale (the longest in the public service) and to increase allowances to principals and deputy principals.
He said not only were these demands omitted, but a modernisation clause had made the payment of 75 per cent of the 13 per cent pay rise conditional on future changes in work practices.
He added that modernisation may include teachers engaging in unpaid in-service training, and conducting parent/teacher meetings in the evening.
He said agreement on these issues would be difficult.