The Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, warned the Irish National Teachers' Organisation that any one-day strikes over the state of primary schools would be a breach of the national pay deal.
The INTO reacted furiously to the warning last night, saying there was not a shred of evidence to justify the Minister's view.
On Saturday The Irish Times reported that the INTO is set to launch a series of one-day strikes if this week's Government spending Estimates fail to provide greatly improved resources for primary schools.
The union estimates that over 500 dilapidated primary schools require urgent repairs or replacement.
The Estimates are unlikely to commit huge new resources to the primary school building programme. The Department is set to gain an overall increase of about 11 per cent, but much of this will be absorbed by benchmarking and other new payments.
Yesterday the Minister said the INTO plans for a wave of one-day strikes would only cause more disadvantage to students.
He also said he did not think such action was in the spirit of Sustaining Progress, the national pay deal. But he declined to say whether he would refer the matter to the teachers' arbitration board, should the INTO proceed with its plans.
Last month the arbitration board found that the ASTI ban on the Junior Cert course represented a breach of the national pay deal. The union has since lifted its ban.
This finding was widely expected as the pay deal makes specific reference to co-operation with new courses as part of "modernisation" .
An INTO strike on the issue of poor school accommodation would be a much less clear-cut case for the board. The pay deal makes no specific reference to primary school buildings.
Ironically, the INTO pushed for the whole school accommodation crisis to be on the agenda in discussions on the national pay deal several years ago. But this did not materialise.
An INTO spokesman said that if the Minister was really interested in "modernisation" he should move to upgrade the hundreds of schools which require urgent attention.
Last year about €175 million of the €5.8 billion education budget was spent on school buildings in the primary sector.
