According to the president of the ASTI, teachers will be getting a 3 per cent pay increase next November on top of the new pay deal agreed yesterday - in recognition of the fact that they agreed to settle early in the last round of pay talks.

Although this rise is "very small", Bernadine O'Sullivan says, "we welcome the fact that the early settlers issue was addressed". Teachers had been "assured that we'd get 5 per cent", she said. "We (teachers) have always behaved very, very responsibly. We've always been very good members of Congress."

This 3 per cent will be in addition to the 15 per cent national pay rise in the new pay agreement. It will be paid over the next two years and nine months. The new deal was agreed in principal early yesterday morning between IBEC and ICTU.

As for performance-related pay, O'Sullivan, says she is "extremely concerned that there seems to be a linkage between whole school evaluation, the school plan and performance-related pay." She points out that "perhaps if the whole concept of performance-related pay had not been introduced into the talks much more reasonable debate could have taken place." But to date, debate has been "very confrontational", she says.

The issue of performance-related pay has also "raised concerns in people's minds about pensions", she says.

The TUI is confident that it has succeeded in "getting rid of" individualised performance-related pay, according to a union spokesman. "We have succeeded in stopping the introduction of individualised performance-related pay."

Jim Dorney, general secretary of the TUI, who spoke to Education and Living yesterday, says: "We are in there and doing our utmost to pursue the agenda of the union. We have very strongly represented our opposition to individualised performance-oriented pay. I am very hopeful that our view will prevail."

Teachers in their staff-rooms are "convulsed" over the issue of performance-related pay and "adamant they are not going to accept it", according to a number of school principals yesterday. "It's probably discussed every day in our staff-room. It would be a very live issue," said one principal in a post-primary school in the west of Ireland.

Teachers are "offended by it", said another principal in the south. "It's very offensive. It's a Victorian, outmoded system which regards teachers' work as piece-rate. The notion of performance-related pay is a nonsense in today's world."