A senior ASTI figure has warned the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, that he will face a picket of his countrywide public consultation process on the future of education if benchmarking payments to teachers are not issued by the time it reaches Dublin.
Mr Dempsey's "Your Education System" (YES) consultation process begins today in Galway, with 16 other meetings scheduled around the State.
"We're quite adamant that if benchmarking is not paid by the time it comes to Dublin, that there will be pickets," said Mr Bernard Lynch, a member of the ASTI's standing committee.
Stressing that he was acting in a private capacity, Mr Lynch said there was widespread anger at recent union meetings about the failure to pay the awards.
"I think it is a very phoney exercise, in a way. The last time something like this took place, it started as a consultation document and ended up with the Education Act."
The YES consultation aims to arrive at a consensus on how education should be structured in the future. Themes include under-performing teachers; reform of the examination system; what children should learn and how schools can connect with the communities they serve.
While Mr Lynch intends to travel to Galway for the opening meeting, which Mr Dempsey will also attend, he said it had been decided that it would be best to wait until the forum came to Dublin to make his feelings known.
However, senior sources at the ASTI sought to play down the possibility of such pickets taking place, and strongly advised their members to use the opportunity to promote debate on the core issues affecting education. With this in mind, the ASTI has issued a special edition of its Nuacht newsletter in which it advises members to attend the meetings around the State. It would be highly inappropriate were the YES process to become simply an arena for discussions on teachers' working conditions, the sources said.
Meanwhile, yesterday's meeting of the teachers' conciliation council to plan the standardisation of the school year until 2009 has been adjourned until next Tuesday.
The meeting is significant as the question of a standard school year is the last stumbling block to teachers receiving their full benchmarking awards in the coming weeks.
Sources have indicated that the attempt to arrive at a standard school year has proveto be a complicated process.
However, there is a determination on all sides for agreement to be finalised next week.