Members of the gardai first, and now secondary school teachers are set to lose out on pay rises from today, after refusing to support the Lansdowne Road pay agreement.
As a result, members of the secondary school teachers union, the ASTI, are holding a protest meeting at the Dáil gates this afternoon.
An estimated 30,000 gardaí and secondary school teachers will lose out on pay restoration measures that come into effect today, because the ASTI, GRA and AGSI organizations did not sign up to the pay agreement.
The newly-implemented Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (FEMPI), a bill that was brought in with some controversy yesterday, specifies that any organisation that has not signed up to the Lansdowne Road agreement will face pay freezes.
Teachers are now warning of strikes and school closures when the new school year begins if the issue of pay for new teachers is not satisfactorily resolved.