When we were last discussing this Estimate I moved to report progress. I was then asking the Minister to consider the desirability of setting up a small independent committee to examine the position of the Irish language in connection with primary education in the country. One gets accustomed in public life to misrepresentation and the extent to which misrepresentation can go is sometimes rather alarming. I recently had a cordial chat with a young priest. We found that we agreed on many things, and when we parted he told me his name and I told him my name. He then said to me: "Oh, are you the man who attacks Irish?" I said, "I am not aware of that," and he replied: "I thought you were the man who attacked Irish in the Dáil."
I will say again what I said when I discussed this Estimate on the last occasion it was before the House in 1932. In my opinion the record of the Minister for Education will stand or fall by the degree of success his efforts to preserve the Irish language meet with. He, above all other Ministers, is charged with preserving the language and promoting it. Any criticism I have made, or may now make, on the position of the Irish language in relation to primary education is purely for the purpose of helping the Minister to pursue an effective policy of revival of the language in this country.
I pointed out already to the Minister that in my opinion the practice of teaching even one subject through the medium of Irish in a school where all the children cannot speak the language fluently is to be deprecated, because teaching children a subject through the medium of a language they do not fully understand is likely to injure their health and, further, is likely to result in their not securing a full mastery of the subject they are being taught. The result of that is that parents develop a disproportionate prejudice against the language, very often a misinformed prejudice, and I am aware that the fight to preserve and promote the language is hard enough without creating new prejudices that have to be overcome.
I put it also to the Minister that it is his duty to see that in those schools where Irish may be profitably employed as a medium for education, real Irish is employed and not what is commonly described in the country as book Irish. So long as he is not in a position to say that every school in the Gaeltacht is manned by Irish-speaking teachers, he ought to be very reluctant to press Irish on schools where the children do not speak the language at all. I urge on him that the way really to promote Irish in this country, and re-establish it in the position it ought to occupy is, first, to secure that the disappearance of Irish in the Fior Gaeltacht will be arrested. It can only be arrested by securing that no child who is a native speaker of Irish is taught any subject, with the exception of English, through the medium of the English language. Every word of instruction in a Fior Gaeltacht school should be imparted by a native speaker of Irish or somebody who has reached so high a degree of proficiency in the language that he can scarcely be distinguished from the native speaker.
Outside that the Minister's objective should be—it cannot be realised immediately, but it can be pretty rapidly—to see that Irish is taught in no primary school except by a native speaker. In the Breac Gaeltacht that is particularly necessary, because if the children are taught Irish in the Breac Gaeltacht by somebody who does not impart to them the real language, when the children go home to their grand-parents they are held up to ridicule; their grand-parents laugh and tell them they are not speaking Irish at all. If you get the children taught real Irish in the Breac Gaeltacht they will then go home and take a childish pleasure in talking to their grand-parents over their parents' heads in a language their parents had not been using. You rapidly find that that use of the language in the home, skipping one generation, will bring these middle-aged people who are now on the verge of losing the language back into the everyday use of it. Once you can do that you will turn a strip of the Breac Gaeltacht into the Fior Gaeltacht and once you turn the tide there it is a tide that will move across the whole country, and the language revived in that way will be revived in a form in which it will live.
I live in a district on the borders of Mayo and Roscommon. It was the Breac Gaeltacht up to ten years ago. To-day, subject to the limitations of my knowledge of the language, if I start a conversation in my place of business in Irish with the old people, very frequently middle-aged people, whom I do not think have the language, will join. Those people who so join in the conversation might not speak the language again during a whole twelve months. These people say that they cannot understand the class of Irish that children are learning in the schools.
What I want, if it can be achieved, is to ensure that each child coming out of a national school will be a propagandist for the language, and will be a centre from which the language will spread out in his own particular district. If the children are taught real Irish by competent teachers, each child can become such a propagandist; but if you attempt to teach a child who does not know the language such subjects as mathematics, geography and other matters of general knowledge through the medium of Irish, you will make that child hate the language, you will make its parents hate the language and you will do the whole language cause irreparable harm. If the children are taught Irish by a competent teacher who will impart to them the real language, you can make every child in every national school a centre from which the language will spread out in his or her own particular district.
I want to draw the attention of the Minister to a certain confirmation of my view contained in his own statement. Under the heading of Secondary Education, beginning on page six and continuing on page seven, he is discussing the question of the Irish language in secondary schools. He says he recognised serious difficulties existed and that he circulated questionnaires. "Valuable information has been furnished," he says, "and the endeavour made by so many managers to be of practical assistance is much appreciated. From the answers received it would appear that there is a considerable body of teachers competent to teach subjects through Irish. The difficulties mentioned vary, naturally, according to the type, location, etc., of the schools, but the obstacle most frequently mentioned is the inability of the pupils to benefit fully from such instruction." That is what the Minister said. When I said that here twelve months ago the Minister for Education remarked that after the violent attack made by Deputy Dillon on the Irish language, such and such a thing would happen. These are the very words I used two years ago. The Minister makes his inquiries and finds what I said confirmed by persons to whom he pays tribute for their co-operation in helping to restore the language to its proper position.
I know this information applies to secondary schools; but, after all, children are very much the same whether in secondary or primary schools. In the light of that, all I ask the Minister to do is to set up a small independent committee of competent people, such as Teachta Breathnach or some Deputy on this side, or an independent person. Let it not be a departmental committee. Let it be composed of independent persons whom the teachers will have no reason to fear and before whom they can give full and free evidence. Let it be confidential, if needs be, and let the committee report to the Minister privately, if needs be, if that course is acceptable to the Minister. Anyway, let the committee report fully and frankly what the situation is.
The Minister, when introducing this Estimate, spoke of the condition of school buildings and mentioned that he foresaw that considerable sums of money must be laid out in the renovation of school buildings for a variety of reasons into which I need not go. I should like to invite the Minister to consider this proposition when he addresses himself to the task of replacing dilapidated schools. In certain countries it has been decided that where there is a scattered population, instead of putting up small national or primary schools here and there through the district, it is better to lay out money in building one good school in a central spot, running bus services out and picking up the children in the outlying districts, thus bringing them into one good school. The economy effected makes it possible to build very much better schools, and it has this added advantage—that the State can provide accommodation for gymnasia or games for the children.
Having a large number of teachers in the larger school the Minister can create something in the nature of an academic atmosphere in the establishment which greatly benefits the teachers and the children. That is an atmosphere quite different from the ordinary wayside school to which the teacher has to reach from a considerable distance at 9 o'clock in the morning. There is the advantage that the teachers are there. They can spend their evenings together in social discussion and intercourse. They have fine premises with modern amenities and facilities for giving the children all sorts of instruction and advantages that they could not be expected to give them in the small, isolated school in outlying districts. It would have this added advantage that in those small outlying districts it is difficult to provide proper sanitary accommodation for the schools. If the schools were in certain areas in the towns, and the children brought into the towns by bus service, there would be no difficulty. There is electricity now, and there is the benefit of the electric light everywhere in the bigger towns in the winter evenings. There is ample sanitary accommodation, and conveniences can be provided where the children come in with wet clothes and wet boots to have the clothes and the boots dried. Very often a child walks across the bog, his clothes and his boots are wet and very often the teacher is perplexed to know what to do. In these large schools, too, it would be possible to arrange for giving the children some kind of a meal in the middle of the day and keep them on for study in the afternoon. It would be possible to do that in these large schools rather than as at present in small schools dotted through the country. I ask the Minister to consider that suggestion at his leisure. The question, perhaps, is a complicated one, but he can consider it when making up his mind as to what programme he is to pursue.
On page 13 of his speech, the Minister spoke of the erection of technical schools for primary technical education in the Gaeltacht. I urged that on the Minister on many occasions, and I urged it in connection with the scheme which I suggested to him for getting a sufficient supply of competent Irish teachers. I asked him before to take every boy and girl in the Fior-Ghaeltacht who is willing to go in for an educational course, to try them out, and see if they could be made competent teachers. Should he find that they are temperamentally unsuited to the teaching profession, I asked him to give them a technical education as carpenter or dressmaker, and then they could go out equipped with that knowledge. I pointed out to him, that in the Gaeltacht, one of the great difficulties is the economic one, where the children must send home money to their parents, if the parents are to keep things going. We want to keep these children from going to America. I want the Minister to provide good jobs for them at home as teachers. In that way he can get some of the most competent teachers of the Irish language. I suggest that he should take every girl and boy who are native Irish speakers and who are willing to go on for the teaching profession, try to train them for the teaching profession and, if temperamentally unsuited, train them in some trade whereby they can make a living.
I see the Minister here is taking steps to build technical schools in the Gaeltacht. That school I see is in Galway City. I do not complain of that. The Irish University is there, and I suppose it is only a fair thing to set up a technical school there. But I do say that he should consider the desirability of building a technical school in the Gaeltacht in Donegal. There is the finest division of the Irish Gaeltacht in Donegal. There is already a great training college there, and I think it would be a reasonable and proper thing to put up a technical school there where the children of the Gaeltacht might be educated in crafts which would fit them to earn their living and make it possible for them to remain at home and live and use the valuable gift of the education they have got. I can understand that Deputies who come from Cork, Kerry and Clare would make similar claims, but I would ask the Minister to give special facilities to the Donegal Gaeltacht in consideration of its standing.
The Minister spoke of the establishment of housewifery in Killarney. I think that more important even than a school of housewifery would be the equipping of a school to train the girls to become competent nurses for children. There is no more fruitful way of spreading Irish in the home than by providing Irish speaking nurses for the children. The pity is that not many Irish speaking girls coming from the Gaeltacht are qualified to take up the position of children's nurses which requires considerable sagacity. Most of these girls coming from the Gaeltacht are young girls. None of them are married women, and therefore, people are reluctant to commit their children to their care. Here is an opportunity of doing something in that matter and the result would be that in a short time there would be a supply of children's nurses who knew Irish. Again I say there is no more effective way of spreading the language than by spreading it in the circles where it would be most helpful.
Under the head of Reformatory and Industrial Schools I ask the Minister how many children are detained under his jurisdiction under the School Attendance Act? I consider the detention of young children in a reformatory or industrial school under the School Attendance Act as an unChristian and scandalous procedure. To withdraw a child from the family circle because it has mitched from school is, to my mind, absolutely indefensible. It is an absolutely indefensible interference by the State in family life. I can quite understand that if the State can prove that the parent is continually conniving at breaches of the law in withholding the children from school, it is the parents who should be made amenable to the law and punished. But why punish the child by withdrawing it from the family influence, because it does what any child would do—to mitch from school? That, to my mind, is a very bad thing to do.
