Primary teachers are cross. Members of the INTO want more resources, funding and jobs. Up at head office in Parnell Square, Dublin, phones are ringing, photocopiers are racing, voices are muted. Serious work is being done.

It's a busy week for the president of the INTO, Brian Hynes. On Monday, he'll be in Dublin. On Tuesday, he'll head for Belfast. On Wednesday, he'll be back in Dublin ready to travel to Galway for a meeting and north to Achill the next day for the one-day strike.

With a slow intake of breath, he begins a litany of INTO complaints. "We have a very high pupil-teacher ratio, an insufficiently staffed remedial service, too few resource teachers, a widespread disadvantage problem, a special education sector which is seriously underfunded, sub-standard schools and a totally inadequate capitation grant causing most boards of management to rely on fund-raising activities if schools are to be maintained and equipped."

Hynes says that his own school, Browne's Grove National School outside Tuam, Co Galway, "lived with" dependence on a strong element of local fund-raising. "There was constant fund-raising. Only for the parents and the board of management, we would simply have very little equipment."

His experiences as principal of a two-teacher school has lent a sense of urgency to the INTO campaign launched this term. "The parents in my school are buying a new photocopier," he says. "We don't get a cent - there's no grant for putting equipment into a national school."

He is not impressed with the Department of Education and Science initiative, IT 2000. - "We certainly can't be getting too excited about it. It's long ago it should have happened."

Brian Hynes' hands are full dealing with an on-going series of meetings which form the core of the INTO national campaign to highlight staffing and funding problems. In the past, although some schools lost teachers, the total number of posts was held and teachers were redeployed to other areas. "This is the demographic dividend," he explains, adding that the benefit is "almost gone" at this stage.

And "there will not be a demographic dividend in future years . . . the number of teachers going on the panels is falling. There were 500 names on the panel in 1995 - this year fewer than 200 went on it. All evidence now points to an increase in the number of pupils due to a rising birth-rate and to an inflow of people - mainly of returned emigrants.

"We need more teachers to reduce the ratio. Hundreds of teachers are needed so that supply panels can be extended to all areas of the country to ensure that supply teachers will be available for substitute work in schools. The Government must create extra teaching posts and this must be done through a multi-year planning approach." However, the Minister has already said that he does not intend to introduce multi-year planning and that the demand for 4,200 teachers would cost £105 million and is not realistic.

The INTO accepts that the Minister has increased the number of trainee teachers going in this year, he says, but "we want to see that in a planned way from now on."

Hynes is passionate about the problems which schools face. "It's very traumatic to lose a teacher. It's pretty traumatic anywhere. The greatest extra resource in a school is its teachers and the greatest loss a school can suffer, from a teaching point of view, is a reduction in its numbers.

"It's probably the best of times and worst of times. We see movement in Information and Communication Technology - but we also see schools losing teachers at a time when the country is doing so well and when the retention numbers should be reduced.

"What makes it worse for teachers in those schools is to hear about all the extra money and in their own small community their school is being deprived of a teacher."

After staffing, funding is the main area of concern for the union. "People are annoyed over the fact that there is not an adequate remedial teaching service," says Brian Hynes. It was hoped that the capitation grants to primary schools would be increased to narrow the grant gap between primary and second-level schools.

"There would be a general feeling that it's time to put in something extra into primary schools," he says. "It has been let slip." Teachers want the gap closed between the £50 per primary pupil and the £177 per secondlevel student.

"Parents, teachers and management have had to bolster up the inadequate capitation grant with fund-raising so that the local school might be kept repaired and equipped."

The National Council for Curriculum Assessment is to hand over the new primary curriculum to the Minister before Christmas, he says. "When it comes to implementing the new curriculum, we expect that there will be funding to support in-service training and reward teachers for the work that they do."

However, INTO sees funding and staffing as paramount. "A considerable number of children in small schools do not have access to a remedial or a resource teacher," Hynes points out. "We still have a disgraceful situation where absent teachers are frequently substituted for by unqualified personnel. Hundreds of teachers are needed so that supply panels can be extended to all areas of the country to ensure that supply teachers will be available for substitute work in schools."

Other on-going issues include the review of principals' duties and responsibilities, the review of the remedial teaching service, and the Teaching Council. The INTO has been looking for the establishment of a Teaching Council for the past 30 years.

"We have always promoted the idea of a teaching council," he says. "It will be up to our members once this report has been launched to engage in debate as to their views."

Hynes returns to the problems he knows about on the ground, the on-going problems faced by primary schools each day. "Our economy is booming," he says. "Now is the time to put back into primary education some of the benefits of our economic growth. The forthcoming budget must mark the beginning of an improved era in the funding and staffing of primary schools. To fail now to give primary education its share of the growing economy would be to miss an opportunity that might never return."

A spokesman for the Department says that there has already been considerable movement on many of the INTO's demands and that the Minister has stated his commitment to increasing capitation grants.