This study examines the professionalism and identity of primary school teachers in the Republic of Ireland as presented in policies from the Department of Education and Skills (DES) and the Teaching Council of Ireland. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was used to analyse policy texts. Taylor’s (1997) framework was used to structure the study and allowed a critical examination of the policy context, the policy text and the policy consequences. Gee’s (2014) tools for performing a CDA were used for an in-depth analysis of the texts. The research problem was identified as the changing understanding of teacher professionalism internationally, in particular the influence of economic rationality and marketisation on education and the role of the teacher. The following research questions emerged, (1) What types of teacher professionalism are implied by policy makers in Ireland (2) What identities are primary school teachers in Ireland described as having by policy makers? (3) What tasks are primary school teachers in Ireland expected to carry out by policy makers? The study is a CDA of two policy texts and a content analysis of a small sample of Whole School Evaluation reports. The researcher concludes that there is a dilemma in the policy texts between an occupational and organisational (Evetts, 2008) understanding of teacher professionalism. Four types of teacher professionalism are identified through the CDA. Teacher as managed professional, teacher as conforming professional, teacher as instrument of change and teacher as (potentially) agentic profession. The study presents a dynamic between teacher professionalism, teacher professional identity and teachers’ tasks where one begets the other and the three are inter-connected. The study concludes by comparing and contrasting teacher professionalism and identity as presented in Looking our Schools (DES, 2016a), Cosán (Teaching Council, 2016b) and a sample of WSE reports.