The end of the `easy ride'?

Education Minister Micheal Martin has had an easy ride from the teacher unions since he came into office 10 months ago. Both union leaders and rank-and-file teachers were beguiled by his Cork charm and impressed by his quick grasp of a complex brief. Women, in particular, liked him.

At the INTO congress in Ennis, Co Clare, last week, there were signs that the honeymoon period might be coming to an end. In recent months the primary teachers union has been working itself up into a lather over shortages of teachers, particularly supply teachers, and one delegate said the "love-in" with the Minister was now over.

So Martin should not have been surprised when, after complimenting his performance so far, INTO general secretary Joe O'Toole unleashed a full front attack on him for "wilfully ignoring" the urgency of the crisis caused by teacher shortages and the under-funding of schools. Throughout the three days in Ennis, these were the congress's two central themes. Angry teachers lined up to tell horror stories of non-existent substitutes panels and unsuitable and unqualified people taking classes. The incoming president, Brian Hynes from Galway, said the whole week's discussions could be traced to one main source: under-funding.

The third theme, championed by O'Toole in particular, was the need for the INTO, as the only all-Ireland teachers union, to play its part in the era of peace and reconciliation heralded - it is fervently hoped - by the Good Friday agreement in Belfast.

O'Toole pushed hard for the motion allowing for the scrapping of the compulsory Irish language test as a requirement for teaching in primary schools.

He said this would open the way for around 200 surplus primary teachers in the North to be offered jobs in the South, thus helping to ease the Republic's teacher shortage.

Department of Education sources said they were puzzled at the INTO's motion, insisting that the only way to implement it would be to do away with the present integrated primary curriculum and introduce time-tabling.