The Government's new pay review body will have to deliver an "exceptionally good deal" if the anger and frustration among teachers is to be reduced, the INTO has heard.
Opening the organisation's conference last night, its president, Mr Donal O Loinsigh, said the ASTI had a right to pursue its 30 per cent claim, but he also defended the position of the other teacher unions. He said he hoped all education partners would support teachers' pay claims currently before the benchmarking body.
Recently his colleague, the INTO general secretary, Senator Joe O'Toole, had described the benchmarking body as an ATM. Mr O Loinsigh said: "There better be enough money in the ATM machine to satisfy our needs." Teachers had been left "floundering in the slipstream of our booming economy.
"While the three teacher unions are clearly united about the need for a substantial improvement in the salary of teachers, the fact is we did differ on how best this could be achieved," he said.
The ASTI had decided to leave ICTU and lodge a 30 per cent claim. "While everyone acknowledged they had a democratic right to do that it must also be understood that those of us that chose a different route had an equal right," he said.
It was in everyone's interests to see the ASTI dispute resolved. "However, I am convinced that our decision to go the benchmarking route like all the other public service unions within ICTU is the right one.
"However, having said all this we must understand that a long road lies ahead, and many important and crucial decisions will have to be made by the membership before bench marking puts money in our pockets.
"If the justifiable anger and frustration out there is to be reduced then benchmarking will have to deliver an exceptionally good deal," he added.
The other main theme of his address was that more needed to be done for children of refugees and asylum-seekers. "Nothing whatsoever, for example, is being done to accommodate religious differences in our schools. There is currently no plan in place to deal with the changing religious profile of school-going children," he said.
Many of those children were accepted generously in denominational schools.
"I am sure this will continue while the numbers are low and do not constitute a threat to the religious ethos of the school.
"However, as the numbers grow they will need to be catered for on their own terms and not merely tolerated within the system," he said.
Discipline in schools was also becoming a major problem. "A serious reduction in class size has to be the top priority if we are to make progress in meeting the needs of disruptive pupils," Mr O Loinsigh said.
"Our demand, as outlined in our discussion document, Discipline in the Primary School, that class size be reduced to ensure that no class has more than 25 pupils is a very modest demand indeed."