Amid widespread confusion last night about what is going to take place in second-level schools about supervision and substitution over coming weeks, the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, said last night that a statement from the secondary school teachers' union, ASTI, was "unacceptable".
The Minister said: "In the absence of clarification from the ASTI by Monday next, indicating they are prepared to operate the agreement on the same basis as the other teacher unions, I will be instructing my officials to make arrangements to continue contingency plans until Easter."
Mr Dempsey said it seemed that ASTI wished to ignore the agreement agreed between the parties at the Teachers' Conciliation Council.
Earlier ASTI said yesterday it would implement only its "understanding" of the new supervision/substitution scheme. However, its interpretation was rejected by the Department of Education and school managers.
Schools are expected to face major problems trying to provide a full supervision and substitution service during the next few weeks. The ASTI general secretary, Mr Charlie Lennon, said the union's members would be going "on call" as little as possible. He said this was because the Department was refusing to pay teachers for going on call until the end of the year.
Schools managers expressed serious concern that, under the ASTI's version of the scheme, not enough teachers would be available at all times to provide supervision/substitution.
Mr George O'Callaghan, who speaks for school managers in voluntary secondary schools, said there would be a "shortfall" of supervisors under the ASTI's version of the scheme.
A meeting between Mr Lennon and the school managers is due to take place next week. The meeting will seek to clear up some of the confusion. "This is going to affect schools in different ways; it is very hard to be precise about it," said one source.
The ASTI standing committee held a long meeting in Dublin yesterday. There was some tension internally about who was to blame for the confusion over the scheme.
After the meeting the committee said ASTI members should implement the scheme based on the interpretation circulated at the time of the union's ballot on the issue last year.
Next week non-teachers, who have been performing the work for some time, are expected to be brought in again.