The Minister for Education hopes to announce plans within six weeks to deal with the serious shortage of substitute teachers for primary schools.
This follows reports that unqualified people with no teaching experience are working as substitute teachers due to a shortage of qualified people. In one Dublin school, the Irish National Teachers Organisation says children have been taught by 10 substitutes during a five-month period.
Democratic Left yesterday accused Mr Martin of failing to take action to deal with the shortage of primary school teachers.
The party's education spokesman Mr Eamon Gilmore called on him to make it easier for teachers from Northern Ireland who wanted to teach in the Republic.
"The Department should also establish a computerised data bank of available qualified substitutes as the time taken in finding subs is one of the greatest problems facing principals," he said.
"Ten years on, the decision to close such a valuable teacher training institution as Carysfort College can be seen as the act of folly it was," said Mr Gilmore.
He said it was ludicrous that parents in some schools had to resort to paying substitute teachers from their own pockets because of the teacher shortage.
Mr Martin acknowledged yesterday there was a shortage of qualified substitute teachers. "The birth rate has increased since 1995 . . . We are going to make decisions accordingly."
Speaking on RTE Radio's This Week programme he said 200 additional places had been created in teacher training colleges last autumn and that more would be created this year.
The Department would also facilitate the provision of a one-year conversion course through which degree holders could qualify as primary teachers. He would also meet the INTO and representatives of teacher training colleges.