The Minister for Education and Science, Mr Martin, has accused the primary teachers' union, the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO), of putting out "extremely misleading" statements about why two Dublin inner-city schools staged one-day strikes yesterday.
Striking teachers at Plas Mhuire Boys' National School and the Central Model Senior NS in Marlborough Street joined parents and teachers on a picket outside the Department of Education to protest at staffing and funding shortages.
Their action was the start of a series of one-day "rolling" strikes by the INTO which will close a school in Achill Island, Co Mayo, today and one in Ballyhaise, Co Cavan, tomorrow. Five more schools are currently balloting on strike action next month.
However, Mr Martin said the two Dublin schools received special supports and had among the lowest pupil-teacher ratios in the country. They both had a full time remedial teacher; extra staff, due to being in disadvantaged areas; a home-school-community liaison service; and extra "per pupil" grants and teacher supports.
Plas Mhuire teachers said yesterday the system of calculating the teacher needs of primary schools on the basis of the previous September's enrolment meant their school had lost a teacher, even though its pupil numbers went up by six this term. They said a special case should be made for deprived inner-city schools.
The principal of Plas Mhuire, Mr Finian McGrath, said they were striking because the Department had taken a teacher from them at a time when 11 per cent of the school's pupils had disabilities, 10 per cent were "seriously at risk", and 15 per cent were from refugee families.
The INTO general secretary, Senator Joe O'Toole, said Mr Martin was wrong to say that the procedures used for allocating staff to schools had been in place for many years by agreement, and that at no stage had the union called for a change.
Mr O'Toole said the procedures for allocating staff to schools were agreed on a year-by-year basis, and since the spring the INTO had been saying that this year there would not be enough surplus teachers freed by falling pupil numbers for redeployment to schools which needed them. At the same time there were not enough new teachers coming out of the colleges. What was needed now, he said, was a multi-annual agreement which took all these factors into account.
Mr O'Toole said no extra teachers had been appointed to disadvantaged schools this year.
He said primary school authorities, unlike their post-primary counterparts, were required to pay a local contribution before they received their annual grant. They got a £50 Government grant per pupil per year to run their schools, compared to more than £170 at post-primary level.
The National Parents' Council (Primary) said it was opposed in principle to the industrial action. "Using children in protests or pickets outside their school is inappropriate and exploitative," it said.