The Minister for Education, Mr Martin, has responded negatively to a long list of demands for increased primary school staffing and funding put to him by the Irish National Teachers Organisation.
The INTO will be stepping up its campaign in the first week of November, when teachers in five schools are due to stage one day strikes, to follow four schools who went on strike last week. General secretary, Senator Joe O'Toole, said yesterday that if Mr Martin did not respond satisfactorily, there would be a series of teachers' strikes in different counties.
However, yesterday, quoting the Minister's Seanad reply to an earlier INTO demand for more teachers, a spokesman said no government could respond to a demand for over 4,000 additional teachers at a cost of £105 million per year.
The only commitment entered into by the Minister with the INTO was for the retention in the school system of surplus teachers released by falling enrolments. "This has been delivered on," he said. He added there had "already been considerable movement" in many of the other areas outlined by the union. The primary teachers union said it is prepared for a drawn-out campaign, including widespread industrial action, unless the pupil capitation grant is increased, class sizes are reduced, more teachers are made available for special needs education and the future supply of teachers is guaranteed.
The schools affected next month will be in Redhills, Co Cavan; Ferrybank, Co Waterford; Dundalk, Newcastle West in Co Limerick and Ballyferriter in Co Kerry.
In a lengthy letter to Mr Martin over the weekend, Mr O'Toole demanded the closing of the gap between primary and post-primary funding; the elimination of the 20 per cent local contribution; reducing the maximum average class size to 30 (from the present 35); extending the "Breaking the Cycle" programme to all disadvantaged schools; appointing an administrative principal to all schools with more than six teachers or 150 pupils; giving all schools access to remedial teachers and ensuring that shared remedial teachers do not have responsibility for more than three schools each.
He also demanded assurances that this year's intake of 1,000 students to teacher training would be maintained for five years; the extension of the supply panel to all areas; and the reduction of pupil-teacher ratios for the mentally and physically handicapped and emotionally disturbed children. INTO sources estimated this list of demands would cost £140150 million annually.
Mr O'Toole said it would be "absolutely obscene" if primary school children, "who are the basis of our growth and development in the future", were to be deprived of funding at a time of such spectacular economic expansion. "Someone better explain to me why there is no money for them, when there was money to get rid of university fees and to fund an extra year at second level," he said.
Emphasising the injustice of a £127 per pupil funding gap between primary and post-primary schools, he urged Mr Martin to "honour his commitment to narrowing that gap in a significant way." He also said it was "constitutionally wrong" that primary schools, unlike other schools, had to produce a local contribution of £10 per pupil before the Department would even release its £50 per pupil capitation grant.
On staffing, he expressed the fear that without a five year staffing strategy aimed at reducing class size and directing teachers towards remedial and special education, trained teachers coming out of college at a time of economic downturn might find themselves jobless - and "the pupils would suffer". Last week Mr Martin said he would not enter into a multi-annual staffing agreement with the INTO.
Mr O'Toole strongly rejected the Minister's allegation that he broke agreements "within six months".