Education must be central to the "active agenda for reconciliation" and "must start in our schools", the Minister for Education told the INTO annual congress in Ennis.
Mr Martin said last week's agreement in Belfast represented a "leap of faith" which "challenges us all to overcome our preconceived notions and work together in a spirit of co-operation. We must give all our young people the opportunity to overcome barriers of distrust and misunderstanding. I think we now have to go to a new level of cross-Border interaction by schoolchildren."
He asked schools throughout the Republic to "develop proposals on how they could participate in expanding understanding. These could range from using the opportunities of the new IT Scoilnet initiative, to full school exchanges and visits." The Government would "provide whatever support is necessary to ensure that our schools are to the fore in the lasting achievement of peace and reconciliation on this island."
The Minister said discussions were taking place with St Mary's Teacher Training College in Belfast with a view to having Northern teachers take the Ceard Teastas Irish-language test there.
However, the INTO general secretary, Senator Joe O'Toole, said his union, "as a non-sectarian organisation, would find it extremely difficult to accept that a move from a position where no Northern-trained teacher is recognised in the Republic to a position where only graduates of the North's Catholic college of education are recognised is anything other than a step back and hardly in the spirit of last week's agreement."
Answering questions later, Mr Martin said that in the new atmosphere he was "open to suggestions" that the Ceard Teastas test for second-level teachers could be looked at again.
However, the requirement to take an Irish-language test would remain an integral part of a primary teacher's qualifications.
On the question of INTO complaints about serious teacher shortages, the Minister conceded that "the need to fill permanent and substitute positions with trained professionals is clear and the difficulties being voiced by schools must be addressed."
The problems were due to career breaks, job-sharing, early retirement and "too severe" cutbacks in student numbers going through the training colleges. He said he was under pressure to announce a specific number of extra teacher training places at the INTO congress.
"My response to this is simple: I have asked that the maximum number of students that can be physically accommodated on training courses be admitted as soon as possible." He refused to say how many this would be, stressing that it was a matter for negotiation with the colleges and the unions, but would be "considerably more" than the 200 extra admitted to the training colleges last September. However, the 800 new places a year demanded by the INTO was unrealistic.
He said he had asked the training colleges to submit physical development plans so that they would have the infrastructure to cater for longer-term needs.
Mr Martin said he was determined to end sub-standard accommodation in schools well within the span of this Government.
He promised that the new primary school curriculum - the preparation of which had been a "lengthy, perhaps too lengthy, process" - would start to be introduced on a phased basis in September 1999.
He rejected the INTO's demand for legislation to deal with disruptive pupils, saying it was too complex a matter to be dealt with by legislation and Department circulars.