Under-performing teachers, reform of the examination system, and how schools might be organised in the future are among the issues raised in a discussion document launched by the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, yesterday.
The document, Your Education System is intended to mark the start of a national consultation process on education, which will also examine the development of information and communication technology within the education system, how to enhance quality in third-level education, and how education in the future will be funded.
It will involve 16 public meetings throughout the country, with the first taking place in Galway on February 5th. Other locations for the meetings, some of which the Minister said he would be attending himself, include Dublin, Sligo, Dundalk, Limerick, Cork and Waterford.
Speaking at the launch of the document, Mr Dempsey said that everybody in the country now had the opportunity to participate in the debate on the future of education in Ireland.
The aim would be to arrive eventually at a consensus, where possible, on how education in the future should be structured.
"In the past, those who reviewed our education system were largely drawn from those with a direct interest in education - the owners and managers of education facilities, teachers and my Department," he said. "That is fine as far as it goes, but it misses the point that the Irish education system is owned by the Irish people.
"I'm inviting everyone in the country to participate in discussion and debate on education in Ireland into the future."
While some people would question the need for another review of Irish education, Mr Dempsey outlined his belief that "standing still is not an option."This would not, he said, be simply "another talking shop."
"I hope there will be quite an amount of talking", he said. "But where there is talking, I hope there will also be an awful lot of listening as well."
The Your Education System document identifies 11 topics, or "concepts", to be debated by the general public.
Themes include the school of the future, what children should learn at school, further education, and how schools can connect with the communities they serve.
One challenge, it says, is to find a way of attracting and retaining people of the highest personal calibre to the teaching profession, while at the same time developing a "workable system whereby those who are unable to meet the demands of the educational environment are supported in finding other work".
Mr Seán Rowley, president of the Irish National Teachers Organisation last night branded the Minister's "vision process" as little more than a "smokescreen to draw attention away from the realities of Irish education".
"When Ministers have little money to spend on education, they talk about how they might spend it," he said. "This is procrastination by a Government that knows what is wrong but won't spend the money to fix it . . . the aim of the exercise is to get people talking about ideals rather than reality, about peripherals rather than essentials"
Mr Pat Cahill, president of the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI) said he welcomed any development which would further enhance Ireland's education service.
He pointed out that teachers were central to the success of positive educational reform. Mr Dempsey's vision must, he said, focus on addressing the lack of investment in education, a situation not helped by the Minister's recent "heavy-handed" approach to teachers and their professionalism.