Last year I also spoke on the claims of the lay teachers in convent schools for inclusion in the pensions scheme for national teachers. I briefly put forward a number of points and I shall repeat them now. Lay assistants in convent national schools claim the right to be included in the national teachers' pension scheme, and I base their claim upon the following grounds:—They are full certificated national teachers, most of them having their training diplomas, and all of them eligible for appointment in any national school. They received their qualifications through the same examination test as all other national teachers. They teach the same programme and are subject to the same inspection marking as all other national teachers. They are appointed under the same agreement forms and are paid directly by the Education Department as all other national teachers are. When one of these lay assistant teachers secures an appointment in a non-convent national school she, automatically, becomes entitled to pension rights.
Were the nuns to vacate any convent national school and the lay assistants, employed in that school, to remain as the staff, then all these lay assistants would, automatically, secure pension rights. In case nuns vacated a convent school and the lay assistants remained on the staff, no change whatever being made in the programme, the methods of teaching, or the inspection of the school, the lay assistants would secure pension rights. It is clear, therefore, that the presence of nuns in a school is the sole reason for refusing pension rights to lay assistants warranted by the Education Department's rules regarding average to teach in that school. The Northern Government, realising the injustice of this extraordinary victimisation of convent lay assistants, hastened to include, retrospectively, their convent assistants in the teachers' pension scheme.
An example will best illustrate this injustice. Two teachers go through the training course together. Both are appointed as assistant teachers upon the same day, one in a convent school and the other in an adjoining national school. During forty years both have taught the same programme; their efficiency has been reported upon by the same inspectors, they have received the same increments and promotion, and both are ordered to retire together. Does it not seem incredible that one of these teachers will receive annually a sum amounting to 40/80ths of her salary as pension while the other is cast adrift without one half-penny?
That is the case made, and I do not see any argument can be advanced in furtherance of such an injustice. Last year I instanced the case of a lay teacher of a convent school about to retire after having had almost forty years' service. It was hoped that this Irish Government would make haste to treat a case of that sort, and it is to deal with a case of this sort that I ask the Government to speed up the consideration of this question which has been so often brought before the House by Deputy O'Connell.