The Government has allocated €80 million to cover the cost of teacher supervision and substitution duties next year. The Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, has confirmed that this allocation has been made in the estimates.
The allocation represents a significant new element in education expenditure. Until this year, teachers often had to perform supervision duties without payment. But the ASTI dispute - when members withdrew from supervision as part of their pay campaign - has changed the situation.
The ASTI is now balloting on the Government's offer of €37 per hour for supervision; this has already been accepted by the other teaching unions.
Meanwhile, the likelihood of teachers being successfully sued over their refusal to implement new syllabi in schools is extremely remote, a leading barrister has said.
Mr Gerard Hogan, of Trinity College Law School, whose opinion was sought by the union, said that while pupils might take legal action, their chances of success were "remote".
Earlier this week, another barrister, Mr Ercus Stewart SC, warned the union that it could face "enormous" legal costs if it continued with its ban on new syllabi in home economics and biology.
Members of the union are currently voting on whether to keep the ban in place. The union's policy is that it will not co-operate with changes sought by the Department of Education until its pay claim is settled.
Mr Hogan said that the Minister was "certainly entitled" to prescribe the contents of the curriculum under the Education Act, 1998.
"Biology and home economics teachers would be obliged to comply with this directive and, as such, it would form part of their ordinary contractual terms and obligations."
Not to adhere to this contract, Mr Hogan said, would amount to industrial action. "The teachers concerned could not lawfully refuse to perform these teaching duties simply because they had a directive from the ASTI to this effect."