Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe is facing into a “perfect storm” of pay demands from teachers, doctors and nurses, which is threatening to derail his €3.2bn giveaway budget in October.

Members of one of the country’s teaching unions are set to ignore a recent “ham-fisted” Department of Education demand to provide alternative arrangements for students who opt out of religious instruction.

The loss of hundreds of members to a rival union has forced the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) into a campaign to try and win them back.

Management in schools are failing to protect teachers from intimidation, inappropriate sexualised behaviour, and misogynistic attacks from problem students, unions have claimed.

A second-level student in Dublin told his pregnant teacher he would “kick the baby out of her” — and was allowed return to class the next day.

Education Minister Richard Bruton has declined to say what penalties, if any, teachers will face should they strike over the lower-pay structure for post-2011 recruits.

The main body representing psychologists has slammed the HSE over proposals to change its Assessment of Need process for children, claiming it could lead to wrong diagnoses.

Teachers have warned that any attempt to introduce assessment of students by their teachers as part of reform of the Leaving Certificate will be strenuously resisted.

Primary teachers are to have the case for equal pay for post-2010 members of the profession considered by the European Court of Justice.

The main body representing psychologists has slammed the HSE over proposals to change its Assessment of Need process for children, claiming it could lead to wrong diagnoses.

Education Minister Richard Bruton has declined to say what penalties, if any, teachers will face should they strike over the lower-pay structure for post-2011 recruits.

Failure to increase pay rates and imposition of new tax rules means Junior and Leaving Certificate exams could be left with no teachers to supervise or correct them, a teachers’ union official has warned.

Secondary teachers have decided not to resume school strikes before the summer in their campaign for equal pay.

Lower pay and a shortage of permanent jobs at home are driving recent teaching graduates to the Middle East and elsewhere overseas, a union leader claims.

Schools that do more to drive down prices of uniforms and books for parents may get a bigger slice of any increases in Department of Education funding for their own running costs.

Nearly one third of second-level teachers who began their careers in the past see themselves in a different job within a decade, a survey for their union has found.