THE Minister for Education, Ms Breathnach, has said she intends to establish a teaching council to regulate the profession, a long standing demand of the teacher unions.
The Minister said she was setting up, as a first step, a committee to examine the "legal, constitutional and operational issues" associated with a teaching council. This would be under the chairmanship of Dr Seamus McGuinness, of the School of Education in Trinity College Dublin.
Ms Breathnach promised she would publish draft legislation to establish such a council once this committee had reported, although this was unlikely to happen before a general election.
She emphasised that the council would not "intrude upon the management responsibilities of the [school] boards of managements or of the education boards."
Dr McGuinness was a secretariat member at the National Education Convention and the rapporteur of discussions held between [teachers, parents and management bodies on the proposed education boards.
It is expected that the committee's discussions will centre on the establishment of an autonomous, self regulating teaching council along the lines of the Medical Council. Its brief would cover areas like standards of entry training; professional conduct; and terms and conditions of service. It could also act as an arbitration and disciplinary body in cases of gross negligence or malpractice.
One of the main problems will be its financing. Some believe it should be financed by the teaching profession. However, when it was last discussed by a ministerial working party in the early 1990s, the unions wanted the Department to finance it.
Both the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) and the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) last night welcomed the Minister's announcement. However, the ASTI noted that there had been three committees to examine a teaching council, since 1974, and none had resulted in its establishment.