Lennon called on to resign by ASTI delegate

The General Secretary, of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland (ASTI), Mr Charlie Lennon was today called on to resign by a delegate speaking at their annual conference.

During the course of a debate on pensions, Ms Phil Roberts, a teacher from Inchicore, Dublin, said Mr Lennon should leave his position.

ASTI President, Ms Catherine Fitzpatrick, asked Ms Roberts to withdraw her remarks. Ms Roberts refused to do this. Speaking from the conference in Bundoran, Co Donegal, an ASTI spokeswoman told ireland.com: "It's very important when debating issues relating to the teaching profession, to stay focussed on the issues and not on personalised attacks".

Earlier today, a motion proposed by five branches of the union on rejoining the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) was withdrawn.

The ASTI spokeswoman said: "The branches felt the timing was not right to debate the motion".

The motion on rejoining ICTU was due to be debated this morning, but was expected to be comprehensively defeated as ASTI seek to continue seeking a 30 per cent pay increase on their own.

The teacher’s union withdrew from ICTU two years ago, in a dispute over negotiations for the PPF pay agreement.

ICTU’s General Secretary, Mr David Begg, had indicated earlier this week that the ASTI could re-affiliate to Congress if they wished.

This afternoon the ASTI are discussing a motion to allow union ballots to take place in schools rather than in their 56 national branches. This is expected to be rejected by the membership.

Such defeats are likely to serve as further blows to the union’s leadership, which has suffered a series of setbacks during the conference as a number of anti-benchmarking candidates were elected to key posts.

Today is the final day of the three teachers unions’ conferences.

The annual conferences of The Irish National Teachers Organisation and the Teachers' Union of Ireland, as well as that of ASTI, have been dominated by teachers’ pay claims.