Minister's address: Teachers and union officials have expressed outrage at comments by the Minister for Education and Science, Mr Dempsey, that some teachers are being paid for not doing their jobs.
Speaking to 800 delegates at the INTO Congress, the Minister was subject to heckling and a slow handclap when he stated that "there are quite a number of people - deputy principals and so on - who are not doing the job they are paid to do."
"That's some insult," shouted one teacher in the audience. He was also booed when he stated that "we need to ensure that those being paid for extra work actually do it".
Speaking afterwards, he told The Irish Times that he wanted to develop an ambitious concept of management that would assess and redefine the roles of principals and others in school leadership. He said he appreciated the "robust" and "constructive" exchange of views.
Overwork and oppressive, time-wasting bureaucracy - especially for principals and their deputies - have been major themes of the congress. So has the view that primary principals and deputies lack parity with secondary school counterparts, even though they do the same work.
The Minister told The Irish Times that he did not intend to cause anger with his comment, which he got from information in the Hay report into primary schools administrations, commissioned by the IPPN (Irish Primary Principals Network). Promising to fight a "rearguard action", Mr John Carr, secretary general of the INTO, accused the IPPN, a support group of 3,000 principals, of "shooting us in the face". The Minister's speech, which promised no increased funding for primary schools, was "long on vision but short on delivery", he added.
The Minister said only one teacher had approached him with a criticism following his comments and that many other principals told him that they agreed with him. However, the mood in the conference hall was grim following the Minister's speech. Mr Carr told delegates that the Minister had "added insult to injury", considering that primary school leadership was already "demoralised" by run-down schools, overcrowding and having lost out in the benchmarking process.
He said: "Principals and deputy principals are under inordinate pressure. They are at breaking point and we cannot allow it to continue. If we are to survive this storm with our professional integrity intact, we must champion our just cause with a high level of intensity."
Ms Sheila Coyle, a deputy principal in Portlaoise and a member of the INTO equality committee, told the meeting that deputy principals were burdened with "intolerable pressure and bureaucracy".
They were already doing teamwork, as well as dealing with organisational, curriculum and pastoral issues.
"I do all this on top of teaching a full school day. In a secondary school, I would have fewer teaching hours," she added.