‘Children must not be pawns in teacher pay dispute’

Children must not be used as pawns in the teachers’ pay dispute by strikes or school closures, a parents’ leader has warned.

Paul Mooney, president of the National Parents’ Council-post primary (NPCpp), was responding to the week-end recommendation by a union’s central executive that its 18,000 members vote for industrial action.

Two ballots of Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) members will take place at more than 400 second-level schools in the next month. If both are carried, union leaders would be authorised to call strikes from the end of October, but could also force schools to close if teachers agree to withdraw from carrying out supervision and substitution duties.