Plans for a full-scale Commission on Teaching and Learning have been put on hold by the Minister for Education, writes Sean Flynn, Education Editor.
Mr Dempsey was expected to announce the establishment of the commission when he addressed delegates at the teacher conferences today.
However, sources say he is concerned that the commission could become another "talking shop" on education and could actually delay reform.
Instead, Mr Dempsey will make the case to INTO and ASTI delegates for a "more widespread engagement" by all sectors of society in the debate on education and teaching. This would include parents and business people as well as teachers and educationalists.
In a separate development, the ASTI president, Mr P.J. Sheehy, has defended his leadership of the union and criticised hardliners in advance of his association's annual conference starting today.
"I have been vilified and abused, but at this stage I am virtually immune to it," he says in an interview in today's Irish Times.
After the bitter pay battles of recent years, the teaching unions saw the proposed commission as an opportunity to vent their frustration about a broad range of issues, including the increasing workload of the modern teacher.
The Government first promised a commission on teaching two years ago at the height of the ASTI dispute. The former education minister, Dr Michael Woods, said it would chart the future course of education in Ireland for the next generation.
However, Mr Dempsey is particularly anxious to widen the education debate, giving greater voice to parents and other groups.
Earlier this month he said: "Parents as stakeholders are hugely underutilised and in many cases undervalued.
"That issue needs to be addressed."
Sources say the Department wants to widen discussions on a range of education issues beyond what one called "the usual debate" between teacher unions and the Department of Education.
The move comes after a significant recent speech by the IDA chief executive, Mr Seán Dorgan, in which he suggested that the "introspective" education debate needed to be more "connected" with the wider society.
Mr Sheehy has incurred the wrath of ASTI hardliners because of his role in giving members a ballot on the €38-per-hour supervision offer and the 13.5 per cent pay award for benchmarking.
ASTI members have signalled the ending of their troubled pay campaign by supporting both of these deals by huge majorities in recent months.
Mr Sheehy says he has no regrets about the shift in policy after the benchmarking report was issued last year.
"When circumstances change, the ASTI could not afford to be fixated on one point of view," he said.
"We had to see the big picture. If people [IN ASTI)]don't want to talk to me or whatever that is their problem."
The ASTI president also said he was determined to serve all 17,500 members of the union, and not any clique or group.
Ideally the Department of Education would like to see parents represented in discussions on such issues as night-time parent-teacher meetings and a common school year.
Negotiations on these and other so-called "modernisation" measures began last week. Payment of the 13.5 per cent due to teachers under benchmarking is contingent on some progress being achieved on these issues.