Twenty-seven thousand primary school teachers may receive up to €1,200 each in payments due to them under the Sustaining Progress national pay deal later this month, after a decision by the INTO's executive not to order its members to refuse to co-operate with school inspections.
This follows what the union claims is "significant progress" made during conciliation and arbitration talks with the Department of Education on the publication of school inspection reports on the department's website.
Last April, the INTO's annual conference supported calls for its executive to issue a directive of non-co-operation with school inspections until its concerns about the process were addressed.
In response, the Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin, warned that she would view non-co-operation as industrial action, and a breach of Sustaining Progress.
This could have seen teachers losing the final 2.5 per cent pay rise - worth up to €1,200 - due to them this month under the national pay deal.
But a weekend meeting of the INTO executive has decided not to issue the directive, after the union received commitments from the Department of Education in relation to a revised complaints procedure for its members. It remains unclear what effect, if any, this new procedure might have on the speed with which inspection reports are published.
Among the areas which the new complaints procedure covers are a right of appeal to the information commissioner and no publication of a report while a review is under way.
Teachers will also be entitled to avail of formal and informal procedures to resolve outstanding issues; clear timeframes for making and dealing with a complaint; the right to representation; and an exchange of documentation, with teachers allowed to see what an inspector is saying and vice versa.