The Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin, has said teachers who attend Friday's national day of protest will have deductions made from their salaries.
A statement issued this afternoon by the Department of Education says it will be seeking details from schools of any stoppages or absences so that deductions can be made.
Ms Hanafin has said arrangements should be made to ensure that all schools remain open on Friday.
Earlier, Ireland's largest teachers' trade union, the INTO, said schools would remain open on Friday despite the national day of protest in support of Irish Ferries workers.
However, INTO General Secretary John Carr said schools should send as many representatives as they possibly could to take part in the march.
The secondary teachers’ union, the ASTI, has said it hopes every school would be in a position to send representatives to take part in the protest.
It said schools should remain open and the number of representatives each school sends should be such as to allow the school to remain open.
Meanwhile, union representatives and management at Irish Ferries have engaged in a second day of talks at the Labour Relations Commission.
Negotiations will resume tomorrow when it will become clearer if a resolution can be found.
In the meantime the wider trade union movement has warned that the ferries dispute is a clear example of the problems a controversial EU directive could pose for Irish workers in the future.
NIB initiates talks
The talks were initiated by the National Implementation Body, which has also recommended that talks on a new national wage agreement begin urgently.
The NIB advises that a review of employment protection measures must be carried out if partnership talks are to succeed.
Employers’ group IBEC has welcomed the statement but the unions remain cautious about entering a new round of pay talks in advance of a settlement of the ferries dispute.
The LRC will ask Irish Ferries to consider paying the minimum wage to foreign workers instead of the €3.60 an hour it proposed.
The framework for talks drawn up by the NIB asks Irish Ferries to postpone its re-flagging of Irish ships but raises the possibility of it going ahead some time in the future.
SIPTU is totally opposed and says agreement can only be reached if the ships stay registered in Ireland.
