THE TUI executive voted narrowly - by 12 votes to nine - to recommend the package to members as the best deal available. However, if the representatives of the third level sector had lent their support, this vote might have been reversed.

A slim majority is nevertheless a majority, and the union leadership - unlike that of the ASTI - is now free to advocate a "yes" vote. However, it still has to overcome the determined opposition of a core of activists, most of them in the Dublin city branch.

One factor working in favour of the union leadership is that the management changes proposed in the package are already in place in the vocational sector where many TUI members work. This removes some of the heat from the debate in this area.

In addition, the union won a last minute concession from the Irish Vocational Education Association of talks on the existing promotions procedures in operation in the sector. Members of the TUI have long been unhappy with the role of politicians in the appointment of teachers and their promotions. The talks are scheduled to finish by June.

The Dublin city branch drew first blood when its chairwoman, Mary Friel, went on RTE radio's Morning Ireland to reject the package before the executive had even considered it. The branch remained unconvinced when the union's general secretary Jim Dorney addressed it the following week, and again rejected the deal.

However, outside the capital the reaction has been more favourable, and a series of regional briefings taking place this week is likely to drum up further support.

Friel, herself an A postholder in Rathmines VEC, says the increases proposed are "paltry" and the early retirement scheme has been "falsely sold". "To qualify at the age of 55 years, you have to have worked for 35 years - an impossibility for almost all teachers," she says.

The removal of the eighth point in the incremental scale is dismissed in similar fashion: "It will still take teachers 25 incremental rises to get to the top of the scale.

RTC lecturers have only 11 points in their scale," she says.

Union president Tony Deffely says the claims of the Dublin city branch are "alarmist". The package deals with long outstanding claims from teachers, as well as creating new career opportunities for many teachers who have been stagnating", he says.