asked the Minister for Lands and Fisheries if he is aware that the knitting and lace instructresses employed by his Department receive small salaries and have no permanency or pension prospects, and if he will have the position of such officials examined with a view to some improvement.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Salaries of Knitting Instructresses.
The policy of the Department is to put these industries on an industrial and economic basis and to assimilate the conditions of employment to those prevailing in comparable industrial concerns. The salaries of the manageresses will ordinarily be payable out of the proceeds of the industry. The manageresses will in future be recruited as far as practicable from the workers and be employed in their home districts. Permanency of employment and pension rights would be unsuited to the conditions of employment contemplated.
Mr. Murphy
Does the Minister not consider that where an instructress of that type has had 30 years' service, and where her wages at the end of that time does not exceed £2 10s. per week, that this is a matter for examination and improvement and an alteration in the system?
Of course, development is at present considered and contemplated, and until these instructresses are on a somewhat different basis I could not give an undertaking to the Deputy that there would be an alteration in the system.
Mr. Murphy
Does the Minister forget that these officials are directly under the control of his Department and that they were taken over from the Congested Districts Board, and does he not know that after a period of 30 years some of these officials are in very poor health, and that as matters stand they have no prospects but the roadside, unless something is done for them by the Department in the way of securing them pensions?