Attempts to end the two month-old teachers' dispute have been given a major boost, with teachers agreeing to suspend their strike for one week and possibly longer.
If a Government-appointed mediator can get them to agree to a new forum for their 30 per cent pay claim, the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland (ASTI) will consider a longer suspension and may drop its threat to this year's exams.
The talks with the mediator, Mr Tom Pomphrett, begin on Monday afternoon in the Labour Relations Commission and will involve teachers and officials from the Departments of Education and Finance.
However, the LRC chief executive, Mr Kieran Mulvey, said that the ASTI's deadline of a week would not be helpful. "It is not possible for anybody to predict a date for completion at this point. The issues are complex and the timetable for completion will be dictated by the ability of all sides involved to reach a workable compromise".
The general secretary of the ASTI, Mr Charlie Lennon, said he hoped that a package could be put together in the week. "We hope to put some kind of negotiating process or forum for our pay claim to our central executive council next Saturday and take it from there", he said.
ASTI sources said that the deadline of a week would be flexible if the talks made headway. "Nobody is going to be rigid on the deadline if the talks are close to completion."
The ASTI has also set February 3rd as the deadline for pulling out of exam work, but all sides hope this will become irrelevant if the talks are successful.
The ASTI and Mr Pomphrett agree that talks will be difficult. This is because they have to take place within the terms of the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness. While the PPF envisages additional pay awards under the new benchmarking body, the ASTI has rejected this idea. So some other forum or body will need to be set up.
But the other teacher unions - the Irish National Teachers' Organisation and the Teachers Union of Ireland - are already signed up for the benchmarking body. Mr Pomphrett will have to be careful that anything agreed with the ASTI does not upset the TUI and INTO.
All three teacher union executives met yesterday in Newbridge, Co Kildare, but no major developments were re ported and they continue to follow different strategies.
Sources in the TUI and INTO said that they wanted to remain with the benchmarking body.
About 70 Leaving Cert students at St Michael's College, Listowel, Co Kerry, staged a one-day protest outside the school gates yesterday "to make their presence felt". The students said that they had been forced to hold their own strike because the teachers' strike was sidelining student concerns.
"We can't afford to take another day off. But we feel it is the only way we can get our message across. We are the ones to suffer because of the strike and we are being treated as pawns", Leaving Cert student Tommy Kilgallon said.
The principal of the 300-pupil school, Mr John Mulvihill, said that the college had been forced to cancel career guidance days to make up 10 days lost due to the teachers' strike. He added: "We intend making up all the days lost on the strike. We are looking at running the pre-Leaving Cert exams at weekends and running football games after school hours instead of during the school day."