The teacher's age-old detestation of the school inspector was the main theme of the second day of the second-level teachers' conferences. "Whole School Evaluation" is the fancy name for the eve-of-the-third-millennium version of the beast and, as it is portrayed by junior ministers Mr Willie O'Dea and Mr Noel Treacy, it is a very tame and harmless creature altogether.
Mr O'Dea was at pains to stress that the Department of Education's version of school inspection would be a uniquely Irish creation, based on partnership and consultation, and a far cry from the tooth-and-nail procedures championed by the British chief inspector, Mr Chris Woodhead, and his educational Rottweilers over the water.
After a pilot programme in 12 schools, the department would get together with the teacher unions, parent and school management bodies and work out a "collaborative approach" to school inspection that would threaten nobody.
Everyone and everything would be "evaluated" - pupils' learning and schools' management and planning, as well as the work of hard-pressed teachers.
But that was not how it appeared to the members of the ASTI and TUI in Killarney and Ballsbridge yesterday. ASTI leaders Mr Charlie Lennon and Mr John White found themselves defending the department's pilot Whole School Evaluation scheme against the angry hordes from the floor.
Mr Lennon warned that under the new Education Act, which gives inspectors statutory rights for the first time, any refusal by a teacher to teach in front of an inspector could be deemed industrial action. The problem is that under ASTI policy, members have the right to refuse inspection, which in practice has meant very few of them have been inspected at all in recent years.
Ms Sarah Withero, from Galway, said her school was part of the pilot scheme - the inspector said they had the right to refuse but nobody did.
Another delegate suggested that some teachers should volunteer to refuse to be inspected as a kind of "test case" of the Education Act. A third claimed that teachers in one school had been pressurised into taking part in the pilot scheme.
At the TUI in Dublin there was the promise of fireworks to come today, even though the issue did not even appear on yesterday's agenda. The only flash-point in an otherwise dull day was when a Dublin delegate, Mr Kevin Gilmore, seized the microphone to demand an emergency motion censuring the executive for disobeying a 1998 resolution to have nothing to do with the pilot project.
Why he needed the motion at all was not immediately apparent to observers, since there are already four amendments down for debate today condemning the executive for "disobeying" last year's congress and "usurping" congress motions. In Galway, INTO delegates were more concerned about their primary principals' workload. It was becoming so heavy they were even prepared to go on strike over the issue. Principal after principal rose to tell of the exhausting life of the Renaissance man who is the teaching primary head of the 1990s.
Mr Finian McGrath, of Dublin's north inner city, recounted how he was once interrupted 13 times while teaching by various calls and emergencies.
Mr Liam McDermott, of Tallaght, said he also acted as a "heating engineer, an electrical engineer, an interior decorator, a locksmith and a mouse exterminator".
Mr Daithi Ryder, of Co Mayo, recalled that a not untypical task was to "clear up after the heifer had broken into the rose garden".