The Department of Education has agreed to raise the "residential element" of expenses paid to teachers who attend mandatory in-service courses. The raise is from £12.7 to £32 a day. This increase will affect only expenses which are paid to teachers who attend mandatory in-service courses such as those associated with the introduction of new programmes such as the Leaving Cert Applied, the Leaving Cert Vocational and a small number of courses dealing with major curriculum developments.

"It's not an ideal sum but certainly it represents a major improvement on the paltry sum of £12.7 which was hitherto available," says John White, deputy assistant secretary of the ASTI. "For the past five years, at our annual delegate convention we have had motions condemning this rate, and finally we have managed to get it changed," he says.