Teaching colleges have expressed disquiet at a proposal by the Department of Education to retrain people from other professions as secondary school teachers.
The Department has sent a confidential letter to all the teacher training colleges, stating its intention to introduce a three-year modular course to train secondary teachers to become primary teachers.
But the concept has not yet been welcomed by two of the principal training colleges, St Patrick's in Dublin and Mary Immaculate in Limerick, which are seeking clarification from the Department.
Dr Pauric Travers, president of St Patrick's, and Dr Peader Cremin, president of Mary Immaculate, are seeking a meeting with the Department to clarify the proposal.
Dr Cremin said: "The colleges of education have already taken in enough students to produce close to 1,500 new teachers in 2004.
"With annual retirement rates of between 500 and 600, it is most unlikely that this level of output is required for the longer term.
"As of June 2003, the numbers of young teachers coming from the colleges will be sufficient to meet most of the needs of the system, including filling most of the places currently filled by unqualified teachers."
The idea of retraining secondary teachers, as well as people from other professions with humanities degrees, originated at Froebel College in Blackrock, Co Dublin, two years ago and has been long demanded by the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO).
Former solicitors, engineers and scientists who are "generous and socially minded" are among those filling the primary teaching gap by becoming highly skilled teachers, said Mr Brian Tubber, who is Head of Education at Froebel.
For example, when the excitement drained from Mr Cónall Clancy's career as finance director of Kindle Banking Systems, he decided to accept one-eighth of his former salary in order to become a primary teacher.
Mr Clancy, a 46-year-old father of four children (aged 10-14), enjoyed growing the Dublin branch of Kindle from 30 to 500 employees over 15 years, but once this had been achieved he began to question the quality of his life.
With his mortgage paid off and school fees taken care of he did what an increasing number of professionals at mid-life are doing. He gave up the world of commerce to study full-time to become a primary teacher, an area with a shortage of 2,000 teachers.
He was motivated by the fact that 8 per cent of primary classrooms are being "taught" by an untrained person, in spite of the fact that this job "is the second most important in the world after parenting."
In some schools the rate of untrained personnel is as high as 50 per cent.
"Being a finance director is definitely easier than being a teacher," said Mr Clancy.
"The little experience I have of teaching so far, I know that this is a very demanding profession where you cannot close the door and take the phone off the hook.
"What few breaks you get fly by."
The Froebel 18-month course was "intense and demanding," said Mr Tubber, who could afford to give up work and pay a €4,000 fee.
Many others cannot, said Mr John Carr, general secretary of the INTO, which has welcomed the initiative.
Those living outside Dublin or Limerick must in addition pay for accommodation, so the new course is envisaged as a "network" around the country.