The Executive Committee of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) has decided to ballot members to engage in a campaign of industrial action, up to and including strike action, over the failure of the Department of Education and Youth to pay a 1% salary increase due as part of a set of Senior Cycle Redevelopment Implementation Support Measures that TUI members accepted in May 2025.
If accepted by members, the campaign will involve as an initial measure the suspension of involvement and co-operation with all elements of Additional Assessment Components (AACs) practical and project-based assessments that form part of the Senior Cycle redevelopment process.
TUI members voted in May 2025 in a national ballot to accept implementation measures of Senior Cycle that were negotiated by the Union with the Department of Education and Youth.
One key measure was the payment of a 1% salary increase payable from 1st September 2025, due under local bargaining, (with a further 2% due under the next succeeding national pay agreement) in return for co-operation with Senior Cycle redevelopment. This is now a year overdue.
Speaking today, TUI President Anthony Quinn said:
‘In a national ballot in May 2025, TUI members voted to accept a package of Senior Cycle redevelopment support measures and have subsequently met their obligations in good faith.
As with any agreement, we expect the Department to keep its side of the deal, yet regrettably this has not happened.
This failure represents a flagrant breach of trust and poses major questions around the Government’s actual commitment to the process of Senior Cycle redevelopment.
In an emergency motion at our Annual Congress in Kilkenny in April, members demanded that the initial 1% payment due on 1st September 2025 be made and backdated without further delay, or else the relevant members would be balloted for a mandate to suspend co-operation with AACs, the practical or project-based assessments introduced as part of Senior Cycle redevelopment that account for at least 40% of a student's total marks in newly revised Leaving Certificate subjects and are externally marked by the State Examinations Commission.
We have waited long enough and are now balloting our members for industrial action over this deeply regrettable breach of faith.’